Kevin Keegan was immediately installed as someone who knew about football. Mr. Fayed's prediction that they would be in the Premier League the following season betrayed the fact that he didn't know very much. He went on to say later that Fulham would become the 'Manchester United of the South'. I think anybody who lived in Fulham or anywhere else who wanted to support Manchester United already did and probably didn't want Fulham to become anything of the sort. Keegan appointed Ray Wilkins as team manager and 11 games later they were still in exactly the same mid-table position as they were before and so sacked him, paid him off his contract and, if you want a job doing properly, did the job himself.
Ian Selley was the first signing. He promptly broke his leg and possibly never played again. I'm not researching any of this, it is off the top of my head, so don't quote me or sue me over any of it. And then, on an away game at Gillingham, a Fulham supporter was stabbed and, I think, died. This didn't seem to be a part of the plan.
The celebrity appointment of Keegan to glad-hand visitors and give the club a 'higher profile' had unforeseen consequences. He gave Mike Conroy, the centre forward he inherited, a pair of boots. Conroy said he didn't know whether to wear them or put them on the mantlepiece.
Keegan had said in an interview that he 'liked a challenge' and it seemed to me he could have found a better one at somewhere like Rochdale, without such financial backing, but soon enough he made things move in the right direction, making the significant signing of Chris Coleman. I saw third -tier Fulham in the cup at Southampton, in among the Saints faithful on a borrowed season ticket. I had to restrain some enthusiasm when Fulham went one-nil up inside ten minutes, and that was how it stayed until very near the end when I was the only one in the whole stand not on their feet celebrating the equalizer. But a 1-1 was a decent result for the work-in-progress Fulham.
My 40th birthday was the weekend of a home game against Bristol Rovers and so that was a part of a weekend of events to mark the occasion. It was not a pretty game but Geoff Horsfield, the hod-carrier centre forward, drilled in the winner of a 1-0 that made sure I had a birthday treat that I liked.
Keegan, of course, left for the England job, a move that I immediately announced was 'a bad move for Keegan, Fulham and England' and was proved right. By the time Paul Bracewell had been promoted from within but failed to get promotion from tier two to the top league and then Jean Tigana left, the press were keen to portray Fayed as somewhat trigger happy in dispensing with managers but Keegan had been his gift to the nation, Bracewell wasn't up to it and Tigana's contract was up, he had delivered his part of the deal and so he moved on.
The story was that Chris Coleman revealed himself as a natural leader of men towards the end of the French regime - of Saha, Malbranque and Legwinski- when Tigana hadn't shown up by 2.30 and so Coleman took charge and told the team to get changed. Apparently footballers who know they have a game to play at 3 o'clock need to be told to put their kit on at 2.30. Tigana put his hrad round the dressing room door at five to three and said, 'Good luck, lads' and Coleman was pretty much in charge from then on.
Although generally quoted among the bookies' favourites for relegation year on year, it was only like that once. With two games to go, with Roy Hodgson apparently having run out of time to save them, they were 2-0 down to Man City mid-afternoon, all but relegated, and I was drinking lager in a back garden in Ealing. My mate came back from indoors and said Fulham had won 3-2. Oh, yes, you'll have to do better than that, sir. But they had. Winning one-nil at Portsmouth to stay up was almost a formality after that and since then they have consistently finished very respectably in the Premiership.
I did even get an idea of what it might be like to be consumed by football as they battled from a late-July start, having qualified for the Europa Cup on the Sportsmanship ticket, through a group and various precarious positions in the knock out stages to the final.
Oh, so they are through again. Who would have thought it. Fulham v. Juventus. Then 3-1 down on the away leg and 0-1 down at home until a devil-may-care rally and a thunderous night at the Cottage, the greatest goal ever seen (by Simon Davies) and a fairly good one by Clint Dempsey and it said 'Fulham 4 Juventus 1' on the scoreboard and it was the semi-final next.
The final was a tragedy of lack of resources. With Zamora dodgy from the start, the ball just didn't stick up front any more and Fulham ended with a better team on the injury list than on the pitch until, within five minutes of taking the final to penalties, a shot deflected in off the inside of Hangeland's leg and that was that.
But the adventure was over either way. It had been an immense season and whether your team actually lift the cup or don't, I thought it was bound to be a deflating experience once it was all over. To travel is so often better than to arrive. Roy had done a wonderful job and Fulham had created some heroic moments. And, being a Fulham supporter, I honestly didn't think it mattered. Like I said, if we wanted to support Man United, we would but we quite clearly don't.
Fulham supplied England with another manager and so Mark Hughes benefitted from inheriting a good unit for one season until mistakenly thinking he was worthy of something better, got neither the Chelsea or Villa jobs and then waited a year before squandering the QPR millions and had to make room for Harry Redknapp to put the finishing touches to the noisy neighbours' relegation campaign.
In Martin Jol, Mr. Fayed has left Fulham with a workmanlike manager and, at least at one stage of last season, the most diverse collection of nationalities in any Premiershiop squad. And the new owner, whose moustache is only a mere echo of Chairman Mo's typically vaudevillean false one, seems to think that Fulham is a venture worthy of a portion of his own personal wealth. You wouldn't have thougt that when Jimmy Hill's campaign to save Fulham meant ostensibly forming a new club, Fulham FC (1987) Ltd.
And, so, thank you very much, Mr Fayed. You done good. 68 years old when you started and still a self-styled maverick at the age of 84. Not everybody would have done that. Any number of other league clubs have been promised a renaissance when in lowly league positions and that is still where a lot of them are now.
I'm afraid I can't find it in me to care as much as I used to. It's an entertainment for little lads and obsessives who failed to outgrow it, I suppose. The first time I saw Fulham was away at Mansfield in about 1969. It hadn't occured to me that they might lose, not with Les Barrett and Jimmy Conway, but they did and I cried once we got back to Nottingham. Nowadays I like to say it would make no difference to me if Fulham went out of business but it doesn't look like they will. They will have to do something really monumental to provide me with a better day of sport than yesterday's wins by Chris Froome on Mont Ventoux and England at Trent Bridge.
But, go on, Fulham, get to another cup final. Try me out. See if you can make me cry again. You'd have to win it, though, to do that.
