After a dreadful weekend, Fulham’s position is precarious. The Whites are eighteenth in the Premier League, seven points adrift of safety and with a worse goal difference than Brighton, whose precious win over Tottenham last night only deepened the gloom. Anyone who watched the car crash that was the 2018/2019 season will be filled with a sense of deja vu.
Tony Khan, Fulham’s Director of Football, is about to oversee immediate relegations from the top flight and, amongst everything else, you wonder, why he seeks so much responsibility at Craven Cottage alongside his other ventures in the shape of American football and wrestling. The brutal reality is that businesses are based on results and neither the Jacksonville Jaguars and Fulham are achieving them at the moment. Success requires both time and hard work and with Khan’s outside interests it seems very difficult for him to give this fantastic football club time and knowledge we need?
The story of Fulham’s last promotion to the big time is already well known. More than £100m was splashed on an entirely new squad, assembled late in the summer and Slavisa Jokanovic paid the penalty for not getting immediate results. A horribly unbalanced side didn’t prove competitive under three managers and the chance to establish ourselves in the top flight vanished in the blink of an eye. The heart and soul of the side that had so stylishly played their way out of the Championship was torn out in favour of new arrivals on big wages, which cost a great deal in terms of cohesion and harmony. There’s no doubt the team needed strengthening that summer, but turning our backs on the likes of Oliver Norwood and Matt Targett – two loanees who have gone on to star in the Premier League – left Jokanovic without two players who understood the identity Jokanovic had built and what he was trying to create.
Jokanovic was gone in November and Claudio Ranieri’s dreadful reign lasted just 106 days. It fell to Scott Parker to see Fulham through painfully to the end, managing wins over Everton and Bournemouth when the day had long since been cast. A novice manager then had to set about trying to change the club’s mentality with an eye on an immediate return. The summer’s transfer business appeared impressive, with experienced Championship performers in the form of Anthony Knockaert and Ivan Cavaleiro arriving to bolster Fulham’s attacking options. But both failed to hit the heights of their previous seasons – and Knockaert is now on loan at Nottingham Forest. Cavaleiro has been pressed into service as a makeshift forward, a position the club has failed to strengthen, with Aleksandar Mitrovic showing the first signs of strain after two-and-a-half unstoppable seasons.
The Serbian striker’s record since coming to Craven Cottage has been remarkable. There’s no doubt he has been short of those standards in recent months and is suffering from a shortage of confidence, but that is understandable after arguably the lowest point of his professional career and a recurrence of the injury that saw him sit out a significant portion of the run-in last season. Parker has such a paucity of forward options at his disposal and definitively ruled out a new arrival after the dispiriting draw at the Hawthorns on Saturday. It is difficult to see where the goals will come from to keep us up.
Successive managers have spoken about Fulham’s frustrations in the transfer market. It is clear that Tony Khan has a huge say on the incomings and outgoings at the football club – but we keep falling short. I have no doubt that he has the best intentions for Fulham, but I believe it is time for him to either give the club his full attention or step aside and allow someone else to fulfil that role. His AEW venture appears to be a great success – and that is to his credit – but Fulham risk squandering another shot at the top flight.
The fans who live and breathe Fulham have been venting their frustration all over social media. Tony Khan tweeted earlier in the season that we would have killed to have been a yo-yo club before he took over his current responsibilities, which shows just how misguided he is. We do not expect miracles or constant success, but commitment to the cause and hard graft from the eleven on the pitch all the way up to the boardroom. I do wonder what the Khan family thinks when seeing Fulham cut adrift from safety with half of the season remaining. A businessman would probably conduct one of those root and branch reviews and consider whether an experienced football figure could make a difference. If Tony stepped aside, giving him more time to grow those outside ventures, he’d remove the vitriol at a stroke – and the club could benefit from a fresh viewpoint.
Well said. You have taken a stand instead of just reporting the news.
The majority of fans feel exactly as you do.
However, the simple truth is that the Khans will never relinquish control. Even if they appointed a Director of Football, he would have to clear everything through Senior and Junior. It’s just the way they are.
There have been a few people brought in to assist in this type of role but none of them have lasted. Javier Pereira was the most recent but, in the past, we seen a few. Alan Curbishley was an “advisor” for a while. The ex-Man City guy-whose name I can’t recall because his contribution was so minimal- was another. None of them can work with the Khans.
As I said in a previous post, Tony Khan has no background in soccer. He didn’t grow up supporting a favourite team. He inherited one at the age of 35!
He has no understanding of how a football club becomes a part of your psyche. It’s as important to us fans as pretty much anything else in our lives-if not more important. I have supported this club since I was 10 years old. Most fans of football clubs, during bad times, can point to a time in their history when they were winning cups and championships. We can’t!
Our taste of “glory” was reaching a final or two- but never winning.
We have suffered more than most over the years-decades. But we would never even think of switching our support to another club. That’s unheard of. We are black and white through and through.
To hear Tony Khan say that we should be grateful for being a yo yo club since he took over is an insult.
We suffer during those lows and it’s about time that he realised it.
I just saw the post which states that talks are advanced to sign Josh Maja before today’s deadline. If that is true, it’s just ludicrous. If it had happened pre-West Brom, we may – just- have been grateful but, now, after Mitro’s return to form, it would be a senseless signing and I can’t see him getting into the team.
Pretty much sums up the way our club is being run by our absentee owner.
I have said for a long time that Tony Khan has to go. Our last foray into the Premier League and his disaster of a transfer policy proved that. I even suggested at Christmas that he should ask for “the idiots guide to being a Director of Football” as a present. I do wonder how much this pandemic has affected the Khans bank balance with their apparent unwillingness to buy but eagerness to loan out players to lessen the wage bill. Anyone that has supported this great club for as long as I have, over 60 years, will know all about the trials and tribulations that we have had to endure over time. This is just another one of them. Fulham Football Club will still be around long after the Khans are a far distant memory
Ridiculous – look at the signings this year – best performers every one of them. We wanted to give the players that got us up a chance to prove themselves in the Prem – they failed miserably. Where would FFC be without the Khans? We have a fantastic stadium and a good manager. Be careful what you wish for.
I do not wish the Khan’s to abandon the club. I wish just that TK recognises that he has had a good go and has the humility, grace and wisdom to accept that there are others who now need to build from where we are for onfield matters.
Players have come and gone; managers have come and gone; two things have been a constant: one is TK in his role; the other we fans. Only one of the two constants has had an influence on goings on, one with a buck stops here responsibility.
That may be over simplistic but there are simple truths.
As Dipper says, the signings in defence in the summer were very good, 3 good players for well under £10m, ie less than Mawson.
I do get tired of “just sign players”. Both the selling club and player have to agree, the selling club cover the player sold. We can’t just spend money due to FPP.
Getting players out is key so Stefan, Seri and hopefully Le Marchand out on loan is good.
I don’t care how much time a person works, it’s the results that count. We are a striker short of a team who can stay up. Let’s hope that is achieved.
Agree with the above comments. We need change at the top and those just below with people that understand football and players at this level. We are going to spend next season in the championship and probably many more after. Change!!!
As ever I’m not sure this is black and white. The Khans have:
– Invested in the stand
– Supported one of the biggest wage bills in the Championship
– Provided stability of ownership
The mistakes that have happened this season are clear. The frustration for me with TK is that the issues were utterly obvious and avoidable:
– Belief our Championship players were good enough. That was naivety. However, once the mistake was obvious the signings that came in have been great. Criticise them for being too slow for sure but we did get the midfield and defence we needed
– Not signing a pacy striker at the start. That was a huge mistake and ultimately may cost us dearly. I can’t understand why that didn’t happen. You can’t play in the Prem with 1 striker any idiot knows that.
– Playing the last dozen games with Cav as our striker and dropping Mitro. That experiment failed. The excuse that Mitro was ‘out of form’ to me comes from him playing with the weaker players at the start of the season. I believe Parker hid behind that to justify Cav. I’m afraid not playing Brighton with Mitro may cost us in the end and that was Parker’s call. Cav not working was obvious months ago so I’m afraid Parker has to own that one.
So yep TK’s transfer dealings are no more than at best a mixed bag. Would we better off with someone else running the transfers…absolutely. Would we better off with a different manager…maybe. Parker has a great relationship with the players and is learning. Having invested in giving him experience I hope we keep him long term now.
Do we need the Khans as owners…probably…but can we please have someone else working with Parker on transfers.
Tony Khan has got to hand over to a person with very good football knowledge, he doesn’t have that if he had that knowledge he would have started his search for a good striker month’s ago, it was his responsibility to identify and recruit players who can make us stronger, once again he has failed miserably,I have supported Fulham for 65 years and have gone through a lot of hard times I was hoping this season was going to be a little better but it seems something’s never change,so please Tony do the right thing and hand over to someone who can do a better job than you have managed. As for being a yo yo club I find that an insult, if that is the height of your ambitions then that says it all. Go now.
I think there’s some here that don’t get the write up.
Tony Khan needs to find a full time DOF and step aside.
Nobody in their right minds would call for the owners to sell up and go.
Ridiculous. Fortunately or unfortunately Fulham FC belong to the Khans. Calling for their dismissal is simply pathetic. What the Khans could do on the other hand is splash some more millions and get us a couple of top players before 11pm