The situation is frustrating, but it shouldn't change what Fulham ought to be doing right now.
With seemingly not that much left to play for this season after our tepid defeat at Anfield, it feels like the discussion around Marco Silva’s contract situation has reached its noisy peak this week.
It’s completely reasonable; obviously fans want to have some sort of feeling of direction around what is going to happen next season and who will be at the helm of this football club.
Standing in the away end at Anfield, watching Fulham pull off arguably the most insipid performance we’ve put together all season, I’d wager there weren’t many people more frustrated with what the Whites put out than me - especially given that Liverpool were reeling from a few bleak results of their own and the protest-driven atmosphere meant we weren’t facing the full power of a Kop in its pomp.
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A lot of the post-match discourse has been around the idea that this team is not giving everything because they’re unsure about the future, the manager’s position, and where this team is going to be next year. Respectfully, I would say that’s bollocks.
For the last few seasons, there has been none of this uncertainty around Marco’s contract - but we’ve seen this movie before.
Last term, after the March international break, Fulham were on course for a potential European finish, and we lost seven of our last 10, including that incredibly painful quarter-final cup exit to Crystal Palace on the first weekend back.
The season prior, we won just two of our last nine, with three draws and four losses. And in our first campaign back up, we won just four of the last 11 after the break, losing six.
Having nothing left in the tank as we get to the final stretch is a massive frustration, but it’s not new, and thus I struggle to tie it to Marco Silva’s future being unresolved.
Many people will point to these end-of-season slumps as a reason why Fulham and Silva should part ways at the end of the campaign, which is as fair an argument as any. I think there’s a trade-off there, and personally I fall on the side of keeping Marco around if we can, but it’s perfectly legitimate to ask the question on whether these tired finishes put a ceiling on Fulham’s ambitions. That argument though, is not really what I’m getting at here.
We haven’t seen Fulham in a managerial search for five years. That’s a very long time in football, highlighted by the fact that Marco is our longest-serving manager since Bedford Jezzard left in the mid-1960s, frustrated that football was abolishing a maximum wage. We’ve come a long way since then.
In truth, we have no idea what a managerial search now looks like, but the long-buried lede of this piece is that Marco’s contract situation shouldn’t really change what Fulham are doing. There is a contract on the table, asDrew points out in his piece, and a pretty good one at that. That’s fine - because in no world are Fulham and Marco going to go our separate ways before the season is out.
What it doesn’t change is that the club hierarchy should have been exploring our options for months - the lack of a signature on the dotted line means that nobody, least of all Marco, should have any issues with that going on.
There is going to be a very interesting group of managers who come onto the market this summer, whether post-World Cup or before it, but the ducks need to be in a row. If the club’s ideal situation is that Marco continues at the helm. That’s reasonable, but you can’t bank on it before the ink is dry and the contract is done.
Whether the club look to a young manager doing well in Europe - which is personally what I would prefer, although it obviously comes with inherent risk. Whether they’re planning to promote from within, or to bring back someone from Silva’s previous coaching staff who would provide a sense of continuity - I’ve said on the pod that I’m a big fan of what Hugo Oliveira is doing at Famalicão this season, and there’s a clear cultural club connection given that he’s of Silva’s coaching tree.
Whether they’re going for a bigger, more globally recognised name - this might sound outlandish but Fulham are a well-established Premier League club based in a nice part of London, who have money to spend and a squad with a lot of talent already set up. The truth is, we don’t know what this strategy is going to be, but perhaps most importantly, the work should already be well in progress by this point in terms of sounding out options and exploring names who would be interested in coming in to manage this side.
If Silva signs, that is not wasted work. It’s due diligence on a complicated situation. If he doesn’t, Fulham are able to spring into action quickly because it has been done. There will be plenty of clubs on the hunt this summer - almost certainly our neighbours on the other side of SW6, probably Liverpool, maybe Manchester United and Newcastle United as well, definitely Crystal Palace - and that’s just the Premier League. We need to be proactive, and diligent - we know what a mistake can mean in this division.
So the contract hangs over this end of season, sure; but while I remain in the camp of “let Marco make up his mind”, those hard yards in the background should already be being run by the club, whatever the outcome ends up being with our incumbent boss.
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