It's now confirmed that I am quite fickle when it comes to Fulham. I was a supporter of RM, I thought he was a good and justified appointment at the beginning of December. However, I admit now that I think the clubs error was not appointing someone with managerial experience instead. I don't want my fickleness to get in the way of my loyalty to the person the club entrusts with the way we play football. I do think the person in charge needs to be given time but deep down I think RM was disappointed with results. It is the players that should take responsibility but there was just something about RM that I look back on and think it must have been confusing as a player knowing what he wants. My fickleness coming through now says to me that RM should have stuck with Kyt as his right hand man, not sure what happened there. Perhaps it was RM saying I need some experience next to me? This would have sent alarm bells ringing if I was CEO, I'm getting tired of my club being dragged through the mire it seems on an alarmingly regular basis. However, I do think that the board have made the right decision, despite my protestations about them having the courage of their convictions and sticking by Rene, just like what West Ham did. Looking back, I was blinded by thinking that RM's experience at Man U was going to be enough to turn things round. He had to be good to be at Man U right? Wrong! Being a head coach/coach is different to being manager and when I look more closely at RM's tenure at Craven Cottage perhaps my ongoing faith was misguided. Here are his Prem Stats: P-13 W-3 D-1 L-9 Goals for 15, goals against 36 Points 10. Compare this to Palace who have had a complete turn around since Pulis arrived. Bear in mind that RM was at Fulham when Pulis arrived at Palace but I've looked at their results from the same time frame. P-12 (Everton postponed last week) W-6 D-1 L-5 Goals for 11, goals against 12! points 19 Before he arrived they were shipping goals like no tomorrow. In that time we were beaten away at Hull 6-nil, lost at home to Sunderland 1-4 and Southampton 0-3, lost to Sheff U in a replay plus others. Not really the form of a team that should be fighting for every point and not leak goals. The basis of a team fighting relegation should have been defensively sound and build from there, not attack and see where we go. We have looked more solid recently, Dan Burn has done really well, there is a decent holding midfielder now but I think I was kidding myself a little bit. He hada chance to address this but only realised this mid January! Coincidentally when Curbishley arrived. There's a lot of forum chat saying that we had turned a corner but had we really? We only got a point at Old Trafford due to a 94th minute last gasp goal, admittedly it was a bit of luck that we desperately needed but the second half wasn't great and the same against Liverpool. They dominated the 2nd half if I am being honest with myself and were a class above us. For me, if the club had handled things better I think RM would still be here but under Magath. This would have been a superb set up. I do also believe that RM thought himself as the manager whereas the club told him he was head coach, where this leaves everyone in terms of roles I don't know but it occurred to me at the time of appointment that it does leave the door open. I don't know why RM didn't think this also. Perhaps he did and the club assured him all was okay. If they did or not we'll never know but I'm not sure why the club, as an employer, would not dot the I's and cross the T's with terms of employment, leaving thngs open to argument. All a bit strange. In summary, I'm more confident that we can survive relegation now than I was with RM. I did have misgivings in my posts with future fixtures and where we can get points. I think Magath has all the credentials to do well and if we can achieve half of what he did at Bayern and Wolfsburg and Schalke then bring it on! COYW
