Martin Jol a good choice?

It was announced tuesday morning that Martin Jol would take over as the Fulham manager only 11 months after turning down the opportunity to manage Fulham last July and the former Tottenham boss will take charge of his first Fulham game at the end of June where Fulham enter the Europa league via the fair play system.

Martin Jols playing career saw him play in Holland, Germany and England  and his managerial career also followed the same pattern as he has already managed in Holland, Germany and England and is set to return to England to his new role in south London.

In his time at Tottenham he achieved a fair amount of success finishing 5th twice in a row and just missing out on a champions league place due to his Tottenham squad being struck down by a sudden illness which prevented them from champions league qualification.

His time at Tottenham unfortuantly came to an end at the beginning of the 2007/2008 premierleague season when tottenham started off the campaign terribly when expectation were very high for that season due to the amount of money spent and Tottenham were highly tipped for champions league qualification. His time at Tottenham also ended with him having less control in the transfer market which undermined his position as manager.

Hopefully in his time at Fulham he will be given full support from the backroom and total control over all transfers and maybe with this he will prove to be a success at Fulham. However it depends what you would class a success for Martin Jol at Fulham would be and more importantly what do the Fulham board expect from Martin Jol.

Mohamed Al Fayed the Fulham chairman on Tuesday spoke about the appointment and stated that

He understands my vision for the club, and believes in what we are striving to achieve here. I know that he will dedicate himself to helping us move forward, and is with us for the long term, to help us build and progress

from this statement we can speculate that Jol is expected to maintain Fulham's top 10 finish and build on the success to take Fulham forward to the next level. Hopefully he will be given time to achieve this and may potentially play more attractive football which Martin Jol brought about at his reign at Tottenham.

At the current time of writing this Chris Hughton is rumoured to become his number two which would be another great addition for Fulham as Chris Hughton is an established Assistant manager and also had a successful spell as a full time manager at Newcastle United earlier this season.

So the big question is will Martin Jol be successful at Fulham?

Martin Jol at Craven Cottage during his time at Spurs