When, in 1997, he took ownership of newly promoted Division Two outfit (now League One) Fulham, Mohamed Al Fayed set a timeframe of five years for the club to complete a rise all the way to the Premiership. In fact, that apparently optimistic target was achieved twelve months ahead of schedule.
Since they began life, on 19th August 2001, in what is now the Premier League, by scoring after two minutes at Old Trafford against the Manchester United title winning vintage of Stam, Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, and Van Nistelrooy, the west London team have been a fixture at the elite end of English football. Ahead of what was their first top-flight appearance for 33 years, and a match that the Cottagers were unfortunate to lose 3-2, Al Fayed had declared his intent to establish Fulham as the ‘Manchester United of the South’.
While they have never attained such lofty status, the club have scaled impressive heights across the past thirteen years, notwithstanding the odd scrape at the wrong end of the table. Their closest brush with the drop during that time came in 2008. Having finished a single point above the bottom three a year earlier; a campaign that had brought the slightly panicked late season removal of Chris Coleman as manager, the portents were writ large for another tough ride under new boss Lawrie Sanchez.
Sanchez had won just one of his five matches in charge upon succeeding Coleman in April 2007 – and that against a disinterested Liverpool team with more than one eye on an impending Champions League final date with AC Milan. When he was sacked in December of the same year, Sanchez’s side were sitting in the bottom three, having earned two victories in 17 outings.
Roy Hodgson, appointed in Sanchez’s place and with only an unremarkable stint at the Blackburn Rovers helm on his Premier League CV, was given little hope of continuing Fulham’s adventure back at the forefront of this country’s game. The naysayers were out in full force when the current England manager began his Craven Cottage reign by taking only one point from his first four games.
That was to reckon without the considerable knowhow of a high level tactician, with a discerning eye for a player, and the ability to find a method for bringing the best from whichever group of footballers he has at his disposal. Moreover, Hodgson is an arch pragmatist; at his most comfortable when in command of a unit that is free of any onus to take the game to its opponents.
Ultimately, Fulham’s 2007/2008 escape, achieved by winning the season’s final three matches to avoid the drop by virtue of having a superior goal difference to Reading, has gone down in club legend.
It is to that memorable year which Cottagers’ supporters will turn for renewed confidence, in anticipation of what is sure to be a nerve jangling twelve game run-in. Fulham will, once more, embark on a defining period in its history with a new incumbent in the managerial chair.
Unlike six years ago, however, when Hodgson was hired with five months to work his magic and, crucially, January’s transfer window spread out in front of him, Felix Magath has arrived with Craven Cottage beset by a distinct sense of chaos.
With ten points from this season’s first 13 matches, and on the back of five successive league defeats, there was little evidence to hold up against Fulham’s decision, in December, to bring Martin Jol’s two-and-a-half years at the club to an end. The gregarious Dutchman had led his team to 9th and 12th placed Premier League finishes but, with his hand being perniciously weakened by a steady loss of stellar performers, Jol’s appetite for the task had appeared on the wane.
Shahid Khan, the American businessman, who in July 2013 purchased Fulham from Al Fayed, decided that Rene Meulensteen, the former Manchester United coach and a man described by Robin van Persie as ‘one of the best coaches in the world’, was the man to revitalise his club. It was hoped that Meulensteen, already in situ as the recently recruited ‘head coach’, would improve results, and perhaps apply his forward thinking techniques to bring some flair back to the Cottage.
Jean Tigana’s team that romped its way to the old First Division title, and then the editions, that under the Frenchman and Coleman established Fulham in the Premier League, were acclaimed for their enterprising, attacking football. Players such as Steed Malbranque, Sean Davis, Louis Saha, Sylvain Legwinski and Luis Boa Morte brought a fluid manner of play to the 1975 FA Cup runners-up that was often a joy to behold.
Hodgson, having preserved the Cottagers’ top flight presence, built a more functional, but nonetheless successful, side. Twelve months after their last day survival, Fulham were toasting a 7th placed finish – an accomplishment that was rewarded by Europa League involvement, and a subsequently wonderful run to the final of that competition.
Any idea that Meulensteen would be able to bring his coaching credentials to a Number One job; blending style and substance to garner the required end results, proved short-lived. An early win against Aston Villa proved a false dawn. A 6-0 drubbing at Hull City, and 4-1 defeat on their own turf by fellow strugglers Sunderland were particularly low lights during a decidedly curious tenure – not to mention a terrible FA Cup loss against League One Sheffield United.
In 75 days of sole charge, Meulensteen’s league record mirrored that of Jol. The 49 year-old was given a free hand to appoint Alan Curbishley and Ray Wilkins to his staff – now both also departed from the Cottage – as well as being at the helm when player trading was possible throughout the 31 days of January.
It all adds up to a huge mess. If he clears it up, the German Magath can consider himself to have supervised an achievement to rival his Bundesliga title successes with Bayern Munich (twice) and, in 2009, Wolfsburg. It is his return to Wolfsburg in March 2011 to steer the club clear of relegation trouble, and an early career stint at Werder Bremen where he pulled off the same feat, though, that are most relevant to Magath’s forthcoming remit.
Adding to suspicions of a lack of cohesion or foresight in Fulham’s thinking, at any stage of what has been a wretched season, is their new manager’s martinet reputation – something cemented by his rapid installation to the club’s backroom staff of a ‘conditioning coach’.
Musing on the potential appointment of Louis van Gaal at his parent club Spurs, Lewis Holtby, one of a raft of January recruits to Fulham, said: ‘I wouldn’t have a problem if van Gall came in. After all, I’ve survived Felix Magath, too’.
Bayern president Uli Hoeness was more forthright, accusing Magath of going ‘well beyond the limits of physical challenges with players’, and ‘pushing players to a ridiculous stage’. Bachirou Salou, a forward under the German’s charge during his time at Eintracht Frankfurt, dubbed his then manager ‘the last dictator in Europe’.
This is no time to be running the legs off a group of players entering the final months of an arduous campaign. With every point so precious, the cost of leaving any drop of energy on Fulham’s Motspur Park training fields is inordinately expensive. The folly of a late season boot camp is there for all to see in England’s leggy showing at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Ironically, as Khan and his Chief Executive Alastair Mackintosh – the man widely considered to have borne a heavy influence over January’s transfer activity – were moving for Magath, a solution to their problems might have been sitting right under their noses.
Curbishley, until becoming Fulham’s first-team technical director on Christmas Day last year, had been out of work since leaving West Ham United in 2008. Similar to Hodgson a year later at Craven Cottage, Curbishley’s initial challenge with the Hammers was to rescue a team that had slipped into the Premier League’s bottom three.
After an inauspicious start to his spell in east London, the former Charlton Athletic boss won seven of the side’s final 9 games to keep the club afloat in the top flight. His batch of January signings had mixed success, – Luis Boa Morte, Lucas Neill and Nigel Quashie playing their part in the Upton Park resurgence, while the exorbitantly priced Matthew Upson was quickly injured – but at least Curbishley was afforded the chance to make his own imprint on the squad’s make-up.
Hodgson was especially astute with his early dealings at Fulham. Brede Hangeland’s was a capture that has continued to pay dividends until today – surely the Norwegian will be hastily restored to his central-defensive berth now that Meulensteen has left. Leon Andreasen and Paul Stalteri might only be readily recalled by the more devoted Fulham follower, but both men were valuable to Hodgson as he set out to solidify a porous unit.
Not only will Magath be left to manage with the hand bequeathed him, he will not enjoy the respective strokes of luck experienced by Hodgson and Curbishley as they pulled off their unlikely rescue acts. The former was the beneficiary of the effervescent Jimmy Bullard’s timely return from serious injury, while the latter was able to call on the turbo charged Argentine superstar Carlos Tevez.
Among Fulham’s recent purchases are £12m Greek striker Konstantinos Mitroglou who has, thus far, been prevented by injury from appearing for the team, Holtby, John Heitinga, former Manchester United youngsters Ryan Tunnicliffe and Larnell Cole, and past hero Clint Dempsey. Unless club record buy Mitroglou hits the ground running, there is little in that number to inspire hope of a break for safety.
It is likely to fall on the shoulders of senior men, Scott Parker, Steve Sidwell, and Hangeland to recharge their colleagues for one last push. Parker, after their time together at Charlton, will know only too well what his former boss Curbishley could have brought to the cause. It was the Londoner’s resignation at the Valley that immediately preceded a campaign in which Charlton were managed by three different men. Their ensuing nineteenth place finish ended seven years in the Premier League – a relegation from which the Addicks have not recovered.
That, after a period in which they have become a recognised top-tier member, is the very real prospect staring Fulham in the face. Those of a mischievous nature might suggest that the Cottagers are merely doing their best, with their miserable form, to fulfil their former owner’s aspiration to ape Manchester United. At Old Trafford, though, a crisis is missing out on Champions League football. If Fulham’s latest experiment, in the shape of an eccentric German manager, doesn’t pay off, it could be some while before United are paying another league visit to the charming surroundings of Craven Cottage.
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