Sean Davis's thoughts...

[Burt]

Well, there's only one place to start today and that's the managerial reshuffle we saw at the Club over the weekend. As regular readers of this column will know, I was pro-Martin Jol, but the decision made on Sunday was totally understandable. Obviously there are a lot of fans who were disgruntled but I was hoping Martin would stay and turn things around.

However, the way we lost to West Ham United and the way we played was clearly very disheartening and unacceptable for Fulham Football Club, and that's the reason why Martin's moved on. Obviously we'd like to thank Martin for his services but the players need to start realising that we're in a relegation fight now. No matter how many people say we're too good to go down and that we've got too many quality players, they need to realise we're in a battle and that we need to start grinding out results.

We've now got Head Coach Rene Meulensteen running First Team affairs and it's a bonus that he's already been in for a couple of weeks. That means he already knows the players and he knows the staff, but he'll also be aware of the task on his hands. He's got a lot of experience but now he's the number one guy so hopefully the players will take on board what he wants. When you're in a relegation fight, although tactics are obviously still important, it's the desire to win that gets you through and sometimes it needs a specific moment to happen to make you realise that. I remember being at Portsmouth when we went to Birmingham City midway through the 2005/06 season and lost 5-0. After that, the players thought 'wow, we're actually close to going down' and we turned it around. So maybe the departure of Martin will be the kick up the backside the players needed, and a helping hand for the new man in charge.

Rene will be looking at what changes need to be made and I think we need more energy, particularly up front. Personally, I think we carry too many players. We've got a lot of talented footballers but a lot of them aren't defensive-minded enough. I'd like us to be a bit more solid, with perhaps just one or two flair players. If you've got more than that then you're asking a lot of your central midfielders, the people like Scotty Parker and Steve Sidwell. So I'd play maybe one or two of them but not all of them at the same time.

One of the backroom changes at the Club has seen Kit Symons helping out with the First Team and I think that's a superb move for the Grey Bear! He's been a great servant for the Club, and he's been coaching for a while now so he'll be providing an extra pair of eyes of someone who's been there, who's done it. He's been in championship-winning teams, and he's also been in relegation battles so he's got a lot of experience. Hopefully as well, what with him being the Under-21s Manager, maybe he'll help with getting a few of the younger lads involved with the First Team. I've been back at the Club doing a bit of coaching with the Under-8s for a couple of weeks now and I've been really impressed with the Academy and the way they go about things. It can only help the Academy with Kit being moved up.

The first match under the new management team sees Tottenham Hotspur visit the Cottage on Wednesday evening. Spurs have had a lot of media attention of late but, at the end of the day, they're a quality side with quality players so it's going to be a difficult game and we know we need to start well. We need the crowd to help us out because I think it's important to make the Cottage a fortress again and the boys definitely need the fans behind them. You never like to see a manager leave but if Martin Jol had still been at the Club for this game, the atmosphere wouldn't have been great. But the Board have made their decision and there's now a new guy in.

For some reason, when a manager departs, the next performance is usually quite good, so I'm hoping that tradition stays, but we definitely need the fans behind us. Obviously we need the players to spark the fans but if they can get behind them from the first whistle then that will make it a much harder game for Spurs and hopefully make our job a little bit easier.

I always enjoyed playing in games under the floodlights at Craven Cottage. When we were in Division One we used to play Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday, and we had a lot of good times in those midweek matches. Obviously we played some of our games at Loftus Road, one of which was a famous win against Spurs. We were 2-0 down and then we gave one of our best performances in the second half and ended up winning 3-2. Hopefully we can do something similar on Wednesday, although it would be nice to win without going 2-0 down! But that's definitely the kind of spirit and performance we need.

Of course, I spent time at Tottenham in my career but there's only one team I'm rooting for on Wednesday night and that's Fulham, 100 per cent. I met a lot of good people at Spurs but my time there was horrible if I'm being honest. I don't live with regrets but hindsight's a wonderful thing and I never would have left Fulham for Spurs if I'd have known how it was going to pan out. That's life but everyone knows that I'm fully behind Fulham in this game.

After that it's another big one when we host Aston Villa on Sunday, and it would be wonderful to go into that on the back of a good result. Villa are a very capable team away from home and they've actually picked up more points on their travels than they have at Villa Park this season. They're set up as a counter-attacking side because they've got a lot of pace on the wings and a striker in Christian Benteke who would cause any teams problems. He's not in the hottest of form at the moment but he's always got goals in him, so it's going to be a dangerous game.