Fulham have taken drastic action in their bid to beat relegation by sacking Rene Meulensteen and appointing Felix Magath, pictured, as first-team manager.
Meulensteen, the former Manchester United coach, was appointed head coach under Martin Jol, only to take control of first-team duties on December 1 following his compatriot's sacking. However, with the bottom-placed Londoners four points adrift of Barclays Premier League safety chairman Shahid Khan has wielded the axe again.
Magath has been installed as first-team manager on an 18-month contract, with Meulensteen confirming his exit from the club despite the club statement not mentioning his name.
The German Magath arrives with an impressive cv, having led Bayern Munich to successive Bundesliga titles in 2005 and 2006, before achieving the same feat with Wolfsburg in 2009.
Meulensteen, who only last Sunday led Fulham to a 2-2 draw at Manchester United and on Wednesday was only denied a similar draw against in-form Liverpool by a stoppage-time penalty, believes the decision to press the "panic button" was wrong. "I am very, very surprised, very disappointed, very frustrated as well," said the Dutchman.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article