.. ended 1 year ago today. Sunday 27 December 2015 21:06 Fulham Football Club Chairman Shahid Khan today issued the following statement: “I am extremely proud to announce that Slaviša Jokanović will be joining Fulham as our First Team Head Coach. “We considered many quality candidates for what we considered to be one of the best positions in football, and I personally interviewed most of them. While the search was time-consuming and painstaking at times, I knew that when the process was complete that Fulham would have the best man possible for this opportunity and challenge. Slaviša’s credentials and passion for the job rose to the top through every stage of this process, and we cannot wait to welcome him to Motspur Park and Craven Cottage to get things going in the right direction for the second half of the season.” And what a long way we've come since then.
Let's look at the year. It started poorly as Jokanovic didn't get off to a winning start in his first 6 games then it seemed to click away to QPR but then slumped back again after. We finished 20th and it was lucky the 3 teams who went down and Rotherham were worse than us (We didn't lose to them). Luckily we had a strike force who kept us up scraping some draws and a 3 win run, while our defence was asked to play out from the back. On here we spoke about our persistent possession across the back 4 and Parker, ending in passing back to the keeper to punt up field. The Summer saw an initial flurry of unknown players and McDonald (Finally got him) come in, and preseason went well, August went well, unbeaten utilising a lot of younger players. A few last minute signings came in, but most of these took time to bed in and seemed to disrupt the flow or was it that the opposition had sussed to press our defence as they tried to play slow possession, September proved to be the opposite of August, no wins. Jokanovic seemed to persist in the slow possession football and although the team had greater possession percentage, points were being dropped in games that were being dominated especially at Home. October seemed to bring the change in tactics we needed where we moved the ball quicker out of defence to the midfield and forwards, this seemed to come about when Johansen was given the box to box role. December has been another good month. Perfection it is not, as Fulham still give up games that they are dominating with sloppy defending, that killer instinct is still missing at times. At times it feels that they have one good half in them, but can't sustain it for the full 90 minutes. This season so far has been more entertaining but also frustrating. I think Jokanovic got a lucky break in the Barnsley game and that gave him momentum to change the slow possession style.
