Tony Khan did a good job fixing his early mistake.

[bill taylors apprentice]

I think he probably did learn a little from his numerous errors but its more likely SP's involvement lead us to this point more than anyone else.

We have a completely different back line.  WHo picked the players?  Who picked the manager?

Really! Who got us into the mess in the first place.
None of us know who picked the players but I suspect some were more to do with being available late in the day and we struck lucky rather than  long term planning or astute knowledge of the game by our DF.

And how many mangers did we have to suffer between Slav & Scott?

[Caedal]

Let's not pretend that TK is the only DoF who has made recruitment mistakes in the past. Look at the success rate of players Chelsea have bought for example.

He absolutely deserves credit for the squad we now have. Even the criticism of the late signings is a bit stupid, given COVID, our late promotion and the transfer window closing later this year (a large amount of deals are generally done at the end of the window).

He couldn't realistically have predicted Mitro's complete fall off a cliff in form. Which really left out striking options thin on the ground.

If we do stay up then financially we should be in a healthy position, with he 3 year rolling FFP including 2 years of Premier League TV income. From that stand point alone, it's critical we stay up, and try and keep this team together.

[toshes mate]

Most recruiters in football do not get the chances that our DoF has had.  They would be deposed long ago, and rightly so.  And the corollary of randomness is that sometimes things just fall together into your lap.  And so please, no talk of Mr TK until he gets things right every time because he talks to the right people every time.

[Twig]

Before this season he got far more wrong than he ever got right. This is the first season when he has very clearly got more right than wrong. Has he turned a corner or has this been a one off? Nobody knows and we need at least another season to judge.
All I know is that I will never, ever change my opinion that it is thoroughly disrespectful to our club to have a part time DoF with not one but two other jobs.

[bill taylors apprentice]

Before this season he got far more wrong than he ever got right. This is the first season when he has very clearly got more right than wrong. Has he turned a corner or has this been a one off? Nobody knows and we need at least another season to judge.
All I know is that I will never, ever change my opinion that it is thoroughly disrespectful to our club to have a part time DoF with not one but two other jobs.

I agree, it's hard to see how he has got it right all of a sudden without changing how things are done.
Maybe his interests elsewhere have forced him to allow SP to have more of a say on recruitment than previous managers.

If so, does he deserve credit for delegating to football people or has it been more a case of circumstances meant stats became a tool to provide additional info rather than the focal point of all signings?

We may never know but one thing I'm sure about is SP has appeared to be involved with every signing and happy to have them unlike many previous managers in the recent past.

[General]

I think it's not that black and white.

He nailed the defence but failed miserably with finding an attack.

That said, even our defence could be undone if we haven't got our finances   in place as we were having issues with FFP last summer which I believe had something to do with our outlay on players previously and whilst I believe we've a few deals in place in terms of loans with options which I assume comes with  an agreed fee.. but key to that is the potential heavy outlay to make andersens contract permanent, which could be steep and which is also dependent on FFP, outlay on making the players we've got potential agreements already for permanent too and having had zero to little income over the last year or so.

IF we keep this squad together - IF we stay up, which as things still stand is not guaranteed at all as we need to be consistent enough and win the games over the remaining ten that outdoes the teams above us and below us, then we still need to buy, in my opinion a goalscoring and creative attacking midfielder, a more consistent striker and another winger (RW most likely)..

Given all of that it could be another season like this next season or close to if we do stay up because andersen may not stay and teams will potentially have us more sussed and we may or may not have the finances to plug that gap, convert the other loans and buy in the necessary attacking additions.

Tony Khan did well to get in the defensive reinforcements we've got.. they've been nothing short of amazing for us, but we've spent the season to date in the relegation places and that's Indicative of something not working. We've missed penalties.. were our players naive?/inexperienced?/over confident?.. is that a failure for  TK? Parker? The player?

[Fulham1959]

As the Israelites (?) said to Moses, after he had parted the waters for them to cross . . . "Yeah, OK I suppose, but it's still a bit muddy".

[Lyle from Hangeland]

As the Israelites (?) said to Moses, after he had parted the waters for them to cross . . . "Yeah, OK I suppose, but it's still a bit muddy".

Lol. People.

[Porthogs FC]

What excites me is staying in the premier league would allow us to rinse and repeat TK's model. offload deadwood, sign loan to buy's (Aina, Lemina, Areola, Maja), trying to outright buy andersen, I don't think we'll buy Lookman/RLC (but may look to loan in again), then fill the squad with loan to buy's again. I think if we do that once more (need to get some forward wingers with quality), that would put us in good stead moving forward for a long time in the PL.

[Baszab]

As the Israelites (?) said to Moses, after he had parted the waters for them to cross . . . "Yeah, OK I suppose, but it's still a bit muddy".

We've been moaning for the last 3,000 years - bit like FFC fans

[Statto]

As the Israelites (?) said to Moses, after he had parted the waters for them to cross . . . "Yeah, OK I suppose, but it's still a bit muddy".

I think it's generally accepted in the football community that we've been one of the worst run clubs in English football in recent years. In the 13/14, 14/15 and 18/19 seasons we were the worst. Off the top of my head only Blackburn and Sunderland come close to being so badly run in the last decade. So the 'some people will never happy' line of argument doesn't really work here.

The fact that after 8 seasons we're happy just to be 17th but with a chance of staying up, shows how low expectations have fallen in that time. By all means acknowledge that most of the acquisitions this year look like good value money, albeit not of sufficient quality or brought in sufficiently quickly to make us comfortably safe from relegation. But let's not lose sight of the bigger picture.

[ALG01]

Brilliant PR machine for TK

However we are in the bottom three, in a massive relegation dog fight

and despite getting a very decent set of defenders, save for buying an injured kongolo, he is entirely the reason we are down at the bottom and not at the top.
He was the reason slav screamed endlessly about the transfers being conducted by non proffesionals and not much has really changed.

TK has one job and that is to assemble a squad. and that he has failed to do again. He decided to rely on a single injured, out of form mitro as our attacking threat and not supplement that.
In January he failed to bring in a forward until the 11th hour and as a result threw away points against our closest rivals.
Lack of a forward line means we have scored 22 goals, only three teams worse and even shot shy brighton have 27.

TK is a drag on the club, no other team would employ him. We beat Liverpool 1 0 with a proper forward line it could have been 3 0, we would have got a result V spurs and beaten Palace. We doi not have a proper squad, just as slav said all those years ago, it remains the same today.

It is a shame to have to read a post like this after such a briliant win but if we stay up it will be down to parker.

Tk is set to stay, I know that so let ius hope, if we do stay up, that we have the framework of a great team. It will be what he does, and him alone, as to whether we can kick on or whether he repeats the nonsense of waiting to deadline day again sabotaging the start of the season. If we go down i am scarred stiff we will stay down this time because it will be a re-build the whole squad next season as the exodus starts.

[Baszab]

Totally agree

Parker and the rest of the coaching team have brilliantly built  a squad and team ethic from a  hastily assembled and completely unbalanced squad

IF we survive, it will be inspite of TK...not because of him

[Roberty]

If were looking for badly run, I think were a long way from top of the pile.

I would have thought that in addition to Blackburn and Sunderland; Sheffield Wednesday, Wigan, Bolton and Blackpool would be deserving of consideration and of course they all look angelic in comparison to the efforts of Rangers who can only be excluded because they're north of the border.

[FulhamStu]

Here we go again, it's like politics, if you are Labour everything the Tories do is rubbish, if you are Tory, the Labour Party are useless.

The truth is Tony Khan is good and bad, examples.

Good, things include recruiting brilliantly in areas most required, ... defenders.  Doing so for very little money and giving Scott Parker a real shot at staying up.

Bad, he is not full time and UK based, he was unqualified but has now gained excellent experience, bit like Parker.

There are of course many other examples of good and bad.  Football recruitment if littered with expensive failures, probably more than successes, for every Seri, we have an Anguissa, for every Mawson we have an Andersen and Tosin.  But when you add Tete, Aina, Robinson, this was certainly an excellent job done, was it perfect, of course not, could have been done earlier and we could have bought the beat goalscorer in our history for £5M.   Spending so big in the previous promotion season is still hurting us but of those players, Mitro, Bryan, Frank have given value, Mawson MLM and Seri not much value at all. Like I said its good and bad and certainly this season he deserves great credit.   Finally not sure he is actually is a DOF, he is really just head of recruitment and we should employ a proper DOF in my view that is.

Parker has been given his head, allowed to grow into the job and I am sure plays an increasingly bigger role, that's good management.

[AnOldBrownie]

Most recruiters in football do not get the chances that our DoF has had.  They would be deposed long ago, and rightly so.  And the corollary of randomness is that sometimes things just fall together into your lap.  And so please, no talk of Mr TK until he gets things right every time because he talks to the right people every time.

Unrealistic expectation simply because you don't like the man.   

[AnOldBrownie]

Totally agree

Parker and the rest of the coaching team have brilliantly built  a squad and team ethic from a  hastily assembled and completely unbalanced squad

IF we survive, it will be inspite of TK...not because of him

Yet when the team does poorly it's due to the ownership group.  Gotcha. :dft001:

[Baszab]

Totally agree

Parker and the rest of the coaching team have brilliantly built  a squad and team ethic from a  hastily assembled and completely unbalanced squad

IF we survive, it will be inspite of TK...not because of him

Yet when the team does poorly it's due to the ownership group.  Gotcha. :dft001:

Yes you are 100% correct - because SP and the coaching team's impact is now being realised - before then, the additions were too late and unbalanced
The squad remains unbalanced - but somehow we can start to be hopeful now - and long may this feeling remain amongst the players

[The Rational Fan]

As long as Flex-N-Gate is making $8 billion in revenue per year and giving £50m to Fulham per year, then any DOF including TK will do fine; but FFC are dependent on financial cash flows out of Flex-N-Gate to the Fulham DOF.

The main difference between Fulham and Newcastle is a) Flex-N-Gate has massive free cash flows to give Fulham and b) JD Sports doesn't produce free cash flows with any profit being used within the business to fund reinvestment. In other words, Mike Ashley cannot be as generous to his DOF, because Shahid Khan runs his business better.

Sacking Tony Khan will probably mean TK moves from wasting tiny amounts of money at FFC to wasting huge amounts at Flex-N-Gate. Tony Khan can lose more money 365 days a year at Flex-N-Gate than he ever lost at Fulham on summer deadline day in 2018. If he losses enough, then the New Fulham DOF will only be selling players.

If we keep Tony Khan as DOF, Flex-N-Gate will keep giving us money then one day will come 17th in the EPL, and from 17th we can build our squad to be better with new "young loan players with buy options" joining every season.

[JackHamlet90]

I'm not a fan of his activity on Twitter regarding Ivan Toney etc he needs to stop that but Khan Parker & scouting team have done a great job this time & the players signing all have quality & are also of a good age aswell