Were Cardiff and Fulham right to sack their managers?

Felix Magath's Fulham tenure was far from a success

Cardiff City and Fulham both suffered relegation last season but stuck with their manager, well for a few more weeks at least. Alex Johnson asks if it was right to move on?

So early in the season and Cardiff and Fulham both sack their managers.

Upon relegation and with a manager not long in situ, you want to hit the ground running the following season to ease the supporters and most of all the chairman's nerves. This did not happen for Cardiff City or Fulham as they dropped into the Championship from the Premier League.

Both Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Felix Magath oversaw relegation with their clubs and were sacked within hours of each other in September. Both managers couldn't arrest the slide that had happened when they were initially given the job only months previously.

Former Manchester United player and Molde manager, Solskjaer, took over from Malky Mackay, but failed to maintain the club's Premier League status and they were relegated. The same with Fulham: Magath took over from former Manchester United assistant manager Rene Meulensteen and failed to get the winning formula required to stay in the top flight.

Solskjaer brought in 10 players during the summer to cope with the rigours of an unforgiving Championship campaign. Magath signed 11 players, including 11million striker Ross McCormack.

In Solskjaer's eight-and-a-half month reign, which started in January this year, the Norwegian won only five of his 25 league games in charge. Magath arrived in February and did even worse with only three wins in 19 league games.

Magath had a reputation in Germany as a bit of a maverick boss with some of his training methods said to be quite extreme. At Fulham he ostracised some of the more experienced players at the club, who were apparently not giving their all to his standards. World Cup stars such as Bryan Ruiz and Hugo Rodallega barely played under the German, and were only brought back into the starting XI when Magath had gone.

So were the owners right to sack their managers so early in the season?

The answer is probably yes, considering the amount of money invested into the playing squad for the forthcoming season, the owners were right to get rid following poor starts.

Under the ownership of Vincent Tan, Cardiff appear to be financially well off, however Tan has already riled the support of the Bluebirds by changing their kit to a "lucky" red from their more traditional blue. He also sacked the hugely popular Mackay, who oversaw their promotion to the Premier League only last year. The fall-out from that sacking was a media-fest which saw accusations from both parties as Mackay struggled to keep hold of his job.

Tan has now decided to appoint the former Leyton Orient manager Russell Slade who guided the O's to the play-off final in League One last season. They have struggled to keep that momentum going this season and Slade was threatened with losing his job, and so the former Yeovil boss resigned and took up his position with the South Wales club.

Fulham are owned by Shahid Khan, a Pakistani-American billionaire who also owns the NFL side, the Jacksonville Jaguars. Khan bought Fulham in July 2013 and has already sacked three coaches. The next step for the West London club to try and win the fans back onside has been to promote former player and coach, Kit Symons, to the position of manager. As it stands Fulham have seen an upturn in results since Symons took temporary charge, winning two of his four matches in charge.

Should Fulham give Symons the job? It's clearly a position he wants after being number two for Colchester United and even a short period in charge of Crystal Palace.

Cardiff have only won once since their change of manager, so it may take some time for them. Do they have time though?