Schwarzer--New Owner at fault for season

Schwarzer's points are good, but I still think Jol really got Fulham's downfall rolling. Someone posted an article a while ago quoting Hangeland about how the coaching/training under Jol was less intense when it came to defending. Of course that was plain to see for anyone who follows Fulham. Jol also brought in all the players doomed unsuitable to a relegation battle.

Edit: I intended to say "deemed unsuitable" but I think I'll leave it the way it is. Doomed seems pretty apropos.

 

Well I blame Don then. He should have bought the club.

 

Interesting that while the article and Schwarzer put the blame on the new owner, he says a couple of times that Khan's being advised poorly, which would be Mackintosh. If Mark thinks this is on one or two people and that the problems just started this year, he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about and sheds no new light on the subject. Nice loyalty to MAF, I guess. Not sure what his two cents do for the club other than divide fan opinion...further.

 

When does Mackintosh take a bigger part of the blame for this? He's basically the GM right? I think in just about any other sport he's all ready gone and replaced after being on your third manager in abouth 3 months.

 

There's blame aplenty to go around. SK must certainly shoulder his share, but this has been in the works for quite a while. As for the Aussie's opinion, well, you know what they say about opinions. It's never just one thing, but for me, the way Clint's initial departure went down was the beginning of the end. It just left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, and the ball started rolling from there. It picked up steam when Jol started jettisoning his comtemporaries like Schwarzer, Zamora, Johnson, et. al., probably at the behest, at least partially, of MAF, to shed money in prep for the sale. The bad vibe mushroomed into the fiasco we have on our hands today.

I may be a simpleton, but I still go back to the eloquent Mr. Herman Edwards who, regardless of what you may think of him, basically got it right in his famous rant that's on everybody's top ten sports sound bites. You play to win the game. Hello. There's little motivation for those actually charged with making it happen in competition to do otherwise. Playing just to "stay up" or perhaps more accurately, to NOT be relegated is not the reason we humans play sports. Whether we finish fifth or fifteenth makes not a scintilla of difference to me.

You play to win the game. To win the tournament. To win a league. To win a trophy. To win SOMETHING. Not to tread water and keep on getting a cut of big boys crumbs.

 

That's why it's inherent on smaller clubs to set other targets. Top 10, Europa, Cup wins, something.

There were problems, particularly ambition and spending-wise, before Jol darkened our doorstep. But I don't think those would have put us where we are today, per se. Southampton were built on a leaner budget than we had. It can be done. How many seasons did we go into the window saying we needed a striker? Or a lb? Or a rb? Or a wing? 5-6 years ago, those were the cries from the fans and we never addressed a need in the next window. We usually didn't address them in the next season. We've been too reactive, not proactive enough, and not good enough at finding bargains to bring to London in the transfer market. We haven't been without success there, just not good enough to hit targets like the ones mentioned above.

For me, the real "beginning of the end" was when Jol came in and was allowed to change the shape and makeup of the team. We had a setup that we were able to staff and replace affordably (for the most part and when Mac and Co could get it right) and it was ingrained in the players. Continuity at manager would have helped us go from strength to strength. But we lost Roy to Liverpool and then Hughes to folly. So when Jol came in, we already had an aging squad in need of phasing out of the first team over the coming 2-4 years. By blowing up the system, he created new needs in addition to those already on the horizon. For a club on our budget, with a MD/CEO/whatever that isn't overly adept at finding good young bargains, it was a big problem. Even then I didn't think it would lead to relegation, but I knew our days of grinding to 40 pts were back.

Credit to the club, we did re-vamp the academy, but when we did it, they had to know it wasn't going to bear fruit in time to replace the vets. Academy's are a low % way to go. But they're also good value when compared to 10M transfer fees and 50K/wk contracts.

When we sold Dembele and Dempsey and didn't replace them or reinvest that money significantly, that's when I started thinking our Premier League days were numbered. I don't know if you guys remember that press conference before West Ham, right after they departed. Jol looked like a beaten man and he never bounced back. I think that's when the rot started to really set in and we've seen a steady decline since. You can go on from there and find plenty of other contributing factors that fooked us, but imo, these were the early catalysts that put us firmly on the road to relegation.