Our Guys in SW6
Daniel Crawford har skickat en artikel som kommer att publiceras i nästa nummer av Sportscene - SWO har dock första tjing denna gång.
FLAWED JUDGEMENT LEAVES TIGANA OUT IN THE COLD
What do you do with a manager who returned his team to the top flight in his first season with a runaway Championship success, took the club to the semi-finals of the FA Cup the next year and guided the club to the third round of the UEFA Cup after winning the InterToto Cup on their first European adventure? Give him a new contract, surely? But that’s not the way things work at Fulham. Instead, Mohamed Al-Fayed decided not to renew his deal and at the same time, with no replacement on the horizon, asked him to carry on until the end of the season.
Tigana’s results were described by Al-Fayed as ‘disappointing,’ but within the context of a newly promoted team, they were more than acceptable. His second term saw the club reach thirteenth and secure a place in the InterToto Cup. Add to this a run to the semi-finals of the FA Cup, for the first time since 1975, meant his first two years could be seen as very successful.
This season, hopes might have been higher after a charge into the UEFA Cup was following by some of the best football long-suffering Fulham fans had seen in a long time. Memorable victories over Tottenham, from 2-0 down, and Liverpool were followed by a mid-season slump as the fatigue factor kicked in, but prior their defeat at Old Trafford, Fulham had gone six league games without defeat and found themselves after a harsh 3-0 defeat in thirteenth place.
Al-Fayed said he wanted Fulham to become ‘the Manchester United of the south’ after buying the club, but no amount of money manages to guarantee success. The appointment of Tigana after the sacking of Paul Bracewell was surprising, but the former championship-winning Monaco coach, won his first eleven league games as Fulham stormed to the Division One title. In keeping with his penchant for outrageous predictions, Al-Fayed refused to suggest a relegation battle was on the cards as Fulham shelled out on Edwin van der Sar, Steed Malbranque and Steve Marlet. The Whites enjoyed a promising start, but a mid-season slump left relegation a possibility and a late revival lifted them to mid-table respectability.
Al-Fayed’s confidence in Tigana was severely undermined by the £11.5m transfer of Marlet from Lyon in September 2001, which has been the subject of rumour and very little straight talking. Suspecting untoward involvement from his manager, Al Fayed has checked Tigana’s bank accounts, brought in a private detective and withheld payment on the final £3.75m instalment of the transfer. The FA have cleared Fulham of any wrongdoing and the club officially claim that agents acted for both sides. However, Tigana formally an agent himself, who had Louis Saha on his books, has connections with the organisation who handled the Marlet deal and rumours have been circulated that he took a £5m bung on the deal. Al-Fayed has been ordered to pay the final instalment to Lyon, but is far from happy with Marlet’s indifferent performances, especially when he earns £40,000 a week. The decision to continue with Marlet baffles many following his poor return, but a club source told Sportscene that French international has clauses in his contract insisting ‘he cannot be taken off unless injured and will play if fit’.
Perhaps it comes down to how you measure progress, but in football’s fickle world, patience is not a virtue that many chairmen possess. The issue of Tigana divided Fulham fans between those who recognised the position of the club when compared with the recent dark days and those who wanted a swifter ascension to the top half of the Premiership. The decision was hardly unexpected given the lack of contact between Tigana and Al-Fayed and the deafening silence from the club, but its timing was puzzling. Why not wait until the end of the season to make an announcement as Tigana is unlikely to be as motivated in the knowledge that he, assistant Christian Damiano and fitness coach Roger Propos will be around come June.
A club spokesperson confirmed that ‘the search for a successor to Tigana was well underway" and a source has said that the ideal replacement would be ‘a young, British manager, who can work on a limited budget, and develop the next generation’. The decision smacks more of cost-cutting to save the club from suffering more losses. Al-Fayed was happy for Tigana to remain at the club as long as he took a pay cut of around £950,000 and even before he called him to a meeting to discover the extent of his commitment to the club, he had made his decision. With Tigana’s French legion poised to follow him out of the in the summer, Al-Fayed may get his reward but whether a promising young coach would want to sell before he buys as Fulham consider a bolt-on-seats return to Craven Cottage, as exclusively Sportscene revealed last month is another matter.
Ironically enough, the most suitable candidate would be the first manager sacked by Al-Fayed, Micky Adams. Adams was replaced by Ray Wilkins and Kevin Keegan in 1997, but has been recognised as the best young manager in Britain. Adams took Brighton to the brink of promotion from Division Two, before leaving for Leicester and looks set to return the Foxes to the top flight on next to nothing. He began his managerial career with Fulham, guiding them to the Second Division just fourteenth months after taking over with the club staring relegation and eviction in the face.
Adams has not ruled out a return to Fulham, but as a man of immense pride, he would probably be unwilling to work under a man who refused to give him the resources he poured into the club under a succession of big-name managers. He told Sportscene two years ago that he ‘felt badly let down by Fulham, considering the job I had done. I didn’t feel I was given a fair chance to show what I could do and was disappointed’.
Reading’s Alan Pardew is also in the running, but it remains to be seen whether he would be willing to leave a club with a realistic chance of gaining promotion through the play-offs that is bankrolled by a millionaire chairman. The future certainly looks uncertain, but then long-suffering Fulham fans are used to that.
// Daniel Crawford
[Daniel Crawford är editor på London magasinet Sportscene, och skriver även exklusivt för ScandinavianWhitesOnline här på SvenskaFans.com. Om ni är intresserade av att beställa magasinet så kontakta SWO-redaktionen.]
