In football, some stories boil under the surface for years before erupting into the mainstream press.At Fulham, Tony Khan has been something of a ticking timebomb for a number of years, with the Whites’ Director of Football having all the characteristics you’d want from a tabloid football villain.He’s outspoken, he’s arrogant and if we’re being brutally honest, he’s an easy target, being supremely underqualified for his role at Fulham and the privileged son of a billionaire who has benefitted from an obscene amount of nepotism.This week we’ve seen things boil over, a number of papers reported on Scott Parker’s scathing comments on him, fans on Twitter have called for his resignation, and Jamie Carragher labelled him a “clown” live on Sky Sports (via The Sun).However, despite so many supporters calling for him to resign, and the American quite simply making a mess of the club’s last two Premier League campaigns, he’s still in a job, and he will be for the foreseeable future.
The reality is that Khan shouldn’t hold such a position, he has no fewer than four jobs listed in his Twitter bio, and if he’s juggling the running of a wrestling promotion, an NFL team and an analytics company all while trying to be a competent Director of Football, he’s going to struggle.
There quite simply aren’t enough hours in a week to do each of those roles justice, and over the past few months, it seems as though Fulham have been losing the battle for his attention.
The fact of the matter is that he is basically the de-facto owner of the club, with actual chairman Shahid Khan rarely getting involved these days,Âand if he is going to be ousted from his role, he’s going to have to sack himself, and that doesn’t seem at all likely.
In all of his wisdom, Khan told a fan to ‘go to hell’ last year when he was told to leave the club, while also making it clear that he won’t be leaving, claiming that he plans to die at the club, and while that isn’t the best way to handle your PR, it is also a sign of just how stubborn he is.
Khan won’t give this job up anytime soon, he’s the one who decides on these matters and it certainly doesn’t look like he’s going to follow Glenn Tamplin’s example and sack himself anytime soon.
It’s hard for Fulham fans to not get involved in this, and the crusade to oust Khan from his role at the club is happening for a reason, but these vocal supporters are fighting a losing battle. Khan is here to stay, whether they like it or not.