Slavisa Jokanovic opted for some sporting cross‑pollination when asked whether, after two and a half years of battles won and lost, Fulham’s promotion from the Championship felt especially sweet. “Like in tennis, we lost one match point,” he said. “But today we smashed the second match point. We are a Premier League team.”
They are, and Jokanovic could feel welcome to all the emphatic language he liked. A double-fault would have been crushing for Fulham, whose charge towards automatic promotion blew up against Birmingham on a hard, well‑grown pitch that perplexed their players and seemed to have laid bare a soft underbelly. Instead their manager can reflect on deserved victory over forces that had at one stage cast his tenure into doubt and could sense that, having so successfully got his own way once, he has enough credit built up to get it again.
“I prefer not so much to think about bad things, about problems,” Jokanovic, palpably in celebration mode as a beery, bubbly, bouncing Fulham dressing room cavorted a few meters away, said after it was suggested that victory at Wembley against Aston Villa may have brought a sense of vindication.
Relations within Fulham were strained while Jokanovic was under the leash of Craig Kline’s algorithm‑based transfer policy, a situation that ended with Kline’s departure in October. The Serb was duly allowed to sign Matt Targett and Aleksandar Mitrovic on loan during the January transfer window and it is doubtful, particularly given the latter’s 12-goal return, whether he would be disposed to quite such sanguine thinking now if those deals had not been completed.
Further internal power struggles would be a damaging distraction before a top-flight season in which, given calm waters, there is little reason to expect Fulham should struggle. Their owner, Shahid Khan, strode jauntily – it would be too easy to say “proprietorially” – out of the stadium he fancies buying but the serious business will soon start again and Jokanovic should start talks over transfer strategy from a commanding position.
“It depends what kind of ambition we are going to show, this is simple,” he said of Fulham’s prospects for 2018-19. “Next year we’re going to be in the Premier League, not competing in the Championship. We need to be brave, we need to make investment, we need to spend money to survive or to make a more important step. It’s not so complicated to understand.”
Khan will, presumably, hear that at closer quarters soon and Jokanovic’s cause may be strengthened given that his own capabilities have not gone unnoticed elsewhere. An earlier link with Chelsea may have been dismissed but the idea was not completely outrageous and it would be folly to risk things coming apart at the seams now.
“It’s probably the best football of my career,” Mitrovic said before leaving Wembley. “Of course I will be happy to stay at Fulham but we will see what happens and we will speak to my agent and other clubs.”
Jokanovic will expect to agree a permanent deal with Newcastle for his countryman for starters and will also hope Ryan Sessegnon – “I prefer to stay with him and what I know is that the kid wants to stay too,” he said – is induced to stay another year before his inevitable progression to a Champions League club.
For Villa these must seem first‑world problems now. Steve Bruce, ashen-faced afterwards and clearly ready for a break after a traumatic six months, will almost certainly have to rebuild in their third and final year of parachute payments. Jack Grealish, the best player on the pitch against Fulham despite seeing the artist‑artisan balance tilted firmly against his side, asked Villa’s press officer to shield him from the media as he walked through the mixed zone and it would be a leap of faith to predict him talking as their player again.
John Terry is out of contract and the outstanding loan goalkeeper Sam Johnstone will surely find a top‑tier club to sign him permanently from Manchester United while Alan Hutton, Mile Jedinak and James Chester are all creaking. From Championship big guns upon their relegation in 2016 they face a battle to avoid flailing among the many also-rans who have fading memories of glories past.
“You have to get together and go again next season,” their left-back Ahmed Elmohamady said. Exactly how many of them do remains to be seen; the same question may be asked of Fulham but, when his next test of wills comes around, Jokanovic should have a crashing overhead volley up his sleeve.
(The Guardian)
