Martin Jol was a former Fulham manager. He was appointed in June 2011 upon Mark Hughes' resignation after only one season in charge. Notably, Jol was approached the previous year about the position which ultimately went to Hughes. In his debut season with Fulham he finished a respectable 9th position and reached the group stages of the Europa League. Unfortunately for Jol, this would be the best he would achieve whilst at the club, and after a below average second season, he endured a terrible run of defeats in late 2013 which culminated in his sacking on 1st December, a day after a 3-0 loss away at West Ham
Martin Jol's first task at the beginning of the 2011-12 season was to qualify for the Europa League, after Fulham had been given entry via the Fair Play ranking. This meant an extremely early season start with a 1st Qualifying round tie away to NSÍ Runavík on 30 June; Fulham qualified for the group stages with relative ease before a disappointing exit in the group stages just before Christmas. In his first season in charge, Jol achieved a top-half finish of 9th with Fulham - seen as a successful season with 52 points achieved, only one shy of Fulham's record tally in the Premier League. The 2011-12 season saw some fantastic victories for Jol, including the 6-0 thumping of rivals Q.P.R. (which included another 1-0 win in the corresponding fixture), the 5-0 win over Wolves and the 5-2 defeat of Newcastle.
Unfortunately for Jol, the departures of Danny Murphy, Mousa Dembélé and Clint Dempsey in the summer of 2012 would begin a downfall in the quality of football played under him, and the results were far from great. Despite not replacing these players like-for-like, Fulham managed a finish of 12th place that season, though it rather masked the fact that the club were perilously close to relegation for the latter half of the season. In 2013-14, the football played under him was incredibly dire at times - at first fans voiced their frustration and began campaigning for him to be sacked, then the media realised the situation. It took a six-match streak of back-to-back losses for new chairman Shahid Khan to sack Jol, and Head Coach René Meulensteen took over with immediate effect on 1st December 2013. Meulensteen had been hired as Head Coach only two weeks previously before he took responsibility for the first team.
