In today's Premiership, club managers with European experience are in vogue, but Fulham went down this path over 60 years ago. Jimmy Hogan was selected to replace McIntyre in the summer of 1934, a bold and imaginative move which was to end abruptly before the experiment was given an opportunity to work.
Hogan was a Lancastrian, who counted Fulham amongst his five clubs in an ordinary playing career in Edwardian times. During his stay at the Cottage (1905-08), he came to admire the Scottish passing game on which the club's style was based, and this was a big influence on his own thinking when he took up coaching before the Great War.
Hogan was a coach rather than a trainer or administrator, and this soccer missionary took his message to several countries across Europe, but particularly Holland, Austria, Hungary and Germany. Despite wartime internment in Hungary, he stayed on the continent in the 1920s and worked with the famous Austrian national side which so nearly beat England at Stamford Bridge in 1932.
Expectations were justifiably high when he took over at Fulham in the summer of 1934 and he enhanced his reputation with supporters by re-signing Newton from Reading. His training methods were unconventional and, tactically, he disliked the widespread use of the third back game popularised by Chapman at Arsenal.
Early results at best were mixed but there were grumbles about his style from the established players. After 31 games, Hogan's reign was brought to a close, the shortest of any Fulham manager, and in a manner that reflected badly on the board.
They sacked him whilst he was in hospital recovering from an operation, recording the board's view that seasoned professionals did not need coaching. Hogan went back to the continent and guided the Austrians to the 1936 Olympic Final and then returned to England, helping Aston Villa to promotion and the semi final of the FA Cup.
His involvement as a coach continued right through the 1950s with Villa and Celtic. He died at the age of 91 in January 1974, in Burnley, not far from his Nelson birthplace, a prophet without honour in his own country.