When former player Bobby Robson was called back from Canada to manage the club he had left as a player some six months earlier, he must have suspected he was being handed a poisoned chalice.
Robson had all the qualities Buckingham lacked, enthusiasm, a feeling for Fulham, an easy personal manner and the desire to succeed, but the job came too early in his managerial career and too late in Fulham's First Division life to stop the rot.
His marvellous playing career with Fulham, West Brom (he had been signed by Buckingham) and England was followed by a few months as manager of Vancouver Royals, hardly the ideal training for the job at the Cottage.
In his own books, Robson has described the trauma of being sacked ten months later with the club stranded at the foot of Division Two.
The Fulham chairman Tommy Trinder left it to the corrupt director Eric Miller to dismiss Robson. His subsequent success as a manager is too well known to need documenting here, and he has maintained a position at the pinnacle of his profession (as well as a passion for football) for a quarter of a century.