Why the Khans could fire Alistair Mackintosh

Could this dysfunctional chapter in Fulham history finally be coming to a close?

Credit: IMAGO

The man known as ‘Ali Mac’ is less powerful than one might think.

Recent filings for Fulham Football Club detail the entity that controls the club - and its board does not include Alistair Mackintosh. This entity is called Cougar Holdco London Limited.

Cougar owns and controls Fulham football club, the stadium, the pier and everything else owned by the Khans.

So, who is on Cougar’s board? Just three people - Shad Khan, Mark Lamping (current team president of the Jacksonville Jaguars) and Fulham FC’s Chief Operating Officer, Darren Preston (listed on Companies House as Neville Darren Preston).

Mark Lamping with Shad Khan.

Shad and Lamping are Cougar’s directors. Lamping is the one who signs the documents in the report. Lamping also serves on the board of the Fulham Football Club Limited subsidiary along with Shad Khan, Ali Mac, Preston, Tony Khan and David Daly.

In other words, Lamping is - along with Shad - technically Alistair Mackintosh’s boss. This is understandable because Lamping’s got a much more impressive and varied bio in sports management than Ali Mac.

The other person who Shad listens to over and above Mackintosh (and over Mark Lamping or anyone else for that matter) is Tony Khan.

Shad has made it clear that he bought Fulham, the Jaguars (and funded AEW) because he wants to work with Tony. TK told Jack Kelly that if his Dad “ever believed I was not the best person for something or if he believed he had somebody better, he would cast me aside very quickly”, but that seems really, really unlikely.

Now, Tony Khan is a busy, distracted guy but - it is increasingly clear - the one thing he really wanted (and says his Dad wanted) was to keep on working with Marco Silva. As Tony said in his interview with JK:

“I have so much respect for Marco and working with Marco the past five years has been one of the highlights of my entire life and I think it will always be one of the highlights of my life. Marco has done so much for the football club and for me personally. It is accurate to say that on Tuesday we all thought Marco would be staying and we were all thrilled about it. I have written a statement and everything I said in that statement is still very much how I feel. I really was hoping that he would be with us for the long haul.”

But in the past, it seems unnamed “senior officials” at Fulham did not seem to be as fond of Marco as Tony. This came out in a piece in the Daily Mirror by Ian Ladyman, published on 25 August of last year. Ladyman wrote:

Fulham manager Marco Silva is unhappy with the fact his club haven’t signed the players he wants this summer and has said so. At boardroom level they will not stress too much. Silva is a coach who continues to improve year on year, but he has also a habit of pushing the boundaries and testing the patience of those he works for (emphasis added).

When he was linked with the Tottenham job last June, Mail Sport spoke to a senior official at the club who just laughed. ‘We are used to this with Marco,’ he said. ‘These stories come and go and strangely enough they usually start in Portugal. But in the end, they settle down and Marco stays here…on what is a very good contract indeed!’

Now, it would be pretty remarkable if this “senior official” who said that Marco “was on a very good contract indeed!” was Tony Khan. That - based on Tony’s comments above - seems very, very unlikely.

No, the source would have to be someone else involved in negotiating a contract with Marco. One person who was involved in those negotiations was Alistair Mackintosh.

I would guess that Mackintosh and Silva may have really not liked each other very much, and that maybe it was Mackintosh’s patience that Marco was testing.

Back in early May, TalkSport ran a piece claiming that Fulham, in an effort to keep Silva “offered him greater control over transfers.” Marco could not easily criticize and push out Tony Khan from his current role, but perhaps he aimed to do so with the other person responsible for Fulham’s questionable penchant for waiting to close deals until the end of the window - our highly paid CEO.

Marco Silva may have been a direct threat to the powers that be and someone who some higher ups at the club wanted to move on.

Interestingly, Tony Khan alluded to the responsibility of others for the delays in transfers that so frustrated Marco in his conversation with Jack Kelly:

“(Marco) wanted to get deals done faster but that doesn’t all come down to me. Getting the things done when we identify the player… there’s a lot of financial levers and things that need to be pulled.”

Now, Shad Khan is notoriously slow to fire his senior executives even when they deserve it. But, boy, does Shad Khan have a lot of reasons to fire Ali Mac:

• The overspending and delays related to the selection and oversight of the development of the new Riverside stand.

• The seeming failure of the club’s ticket pricing strategy.

• The apparent alienation of the Fulham Supporter Trust and other fan groups.

• The many failed transfer deals, like the one with Andre where Ali Mac went to Brazil to personally negotiate or the transfer of Justin Kluivert.

It’s amazing to me, given this list, that Ali Mac not only still has his job but is one of the highest paid executives in the Premier League. He must be very, very good at accounting and managing up. But, this latest failure - not retaining Marco - might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Lately, there is again a disconnect between what the press says about our efforts to find a new manager and what Tony is saying. TK is insistent that the club is still talking to two candidates and yet we continually get - seemingly sourced by higher ups at the club - stories about how the club is only talking to one candidate (Arbeloa).

It will be interesting to see what happens next. Likely whoever we hire will have done their research about the club and have read about Marco’s concerns and frustrations (and maybe even talked to his team in the background) and may well push the Khans to finally make a change as a part of the deal to join.

A new coach demanding better management was exactly how the Khans were persuaded to finally move on from mediocre management at the Jacksonville Jaguars. So, it will be interesting to see what happens with Fulham’s management after we hire our next coach.

I for one hope that it will be time for a change.