The Interview: Fulham's Tony Khan
Chris Wittyngham Interviews Fulham's Co-owner and Director of Football Operations
Tony Khan is a busy guy. The son of Shahid Khan, the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Fulham, Tony has prominent roles in both teams as well as being the founder and CEO of All Elite Wrestling. But we’re most interested in him from a soccer perspective, and Chris Wittyngham recently interviewed Khan about his work at Fulham. The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Chris Wittyngham:
I’m joined now by Tony Khan and on the Le Batard and Friends network we talk mostly about AEW. We talk mostly about the Jacksonville Jaguars, and you always mention, “I want to talk a little bit of European football,” and obviously there isn't the room for it. So I wanted to kind of have a side conversation here. You're the sporting director of Fulham. So you're kind of connected in a lot of different worlds. I guess I would start here. So your team Fulham has gone up and they've gone down and they've gone up and they've gone down, and that's not a thing that happens in American sports. And so for Americans who are unfamiliar with what the feeling of relegation is, can you describe what the experience has been the last few years of being really good in the Championship but haven't been able to stay up?
Tony Khan:
It's been a truly up and down experience. Right now the team's playing as well or better than they've played in a long time. And I think we're on a pretty historic run right now. As I say this, we're coming off six straight wins, five consecutive clean sheets and a run of six matches where we've outscored opponents 21-1. And I give so much credit to our head coach, Marco Silva. I've really enjoyed working with him since he arrived in the summer. And we had a very strong core of players to build around, and I've enjoyed working with him.
And I've been the director of football for six years, which entails overseeing the transfers and the loans and working with the coaching staff and the scouting department on identifying the right players to bring in and out of the club. I also philosophically believe that we have a club playing philosophy that is very much in tune with Marco Silva's philosophies, and I just thought it was a great fit for Fulham and the personnel we have and the things that they've done well and really done very successfully, if you look historically, particularly in the six years that I've been there as the director of football and also where a lot of these players have been there, the ones that have been with us four or five, six years.
Chris Wittyngham:
I want to start with those origins. So when your family decides to purchase Fulham, first off, how did that come about and how did you being the sporting director and being in charge come about? And when you enter the job, what's your philosophy? How do you go about doing it?
Tony Khan:
So my father had bought the club in 2013, and not long after he bought the club, he didn't really make a lot of changes in his first year right away. He bought a team that was relegated. And the, they went down to the second division of English football, which is the English Football League Championship. And we are currently in that league now, and it's been a long road up and down. And the thing about it was, he was very optimistic about their chances to come back, and the team really struggled then much more than he had ever expected in the second division. And the first year, long before I worked there or had had really any thoughts about working at Fulham, if that makes sense, I just kind of watched from afar as I was working at the Jacksonville Jaguars running the analytics department that I had started and doing statistics for the games to provide the coach on an opponent or our own tendencies or our own players.
And primarily focused since the beginning in the Jaguars, I've been on undrafted free agents, trying to find players undrafted, our guys I called up after the draft and signed because that's kind of my thing since the beginning is looking for those hidden gems, those guys that slip through the cracks. So that's been one of my primary focuses, especially in the offseason, with that job. And I was working a ton of hours in the NFL and also investing in the statistics company, TruMedia. And I ended up buying out that company soon after, again, before I had become the sporting director or taken over that area at Fulham. And my dad ended up being surprised how much the team struggled in his first few years. And I think it was a learning curve for sure in English football. And the team finished 17th in the Championship in that season.
And then the next season, for those people who aren't familiar with it, there's relegation down many levels and that is a 24-team league, the Championship. And if you finish in the bottom three, which is obviously 22, 23 or 24, you will go down to the third division and the three teams will come up from there. It's a different system. If you don't follow it for a lot of the American listeners of Dan's show and of this network of shows, it's that the top two teams get automatically promoted. And then you have, of course, a four-team playoff where three, four, five and six in the standings in the table will be competing in a playoff. And the final is at Wembley Stadium. And it's a big event, we're very familiar with now.
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Chris Wittyngham:
Yeah, it's been often dubbed the world's richest football match because the difference between staying in the Championship and going up to the Premier League is worth such a massive amount of money that that’s what's on the line. And very often, those games are super tension-packed and they're sometimes bad because I think all the players recognize how big the opportunity is for them to go up to the Premier League for their futures, for the club's future, for the fans. It's just this tension-soaked game.
Tony Khan:
Well, I've been in a few of them. We took over again, and I had nothing to do with the club the first few years. And so they had gotten relegated in Dad's first year when they had owned the club. And then the next two years they finished 17th. And then, I was prefacing this, they finished 20th in the second division, and they were very, very much in danger both of these years, honestly, even when they finished 17th. It sounds better than it was almost because that year was, as far as the danger of being relegated, there was a lot of the season where they were near the bottom of the table and it made a pretty good run at the end to finish 17th. And then to finish 20th, I think dad was frustrated with it, and I believed that watching it and studying it now for a while from afar, we had been working TruMedia in English football analytics, and I had built some metrics.
And I really believed that if we put together a system where I aggregated the scouting and all of the data on all of the available players in the game and all the players we could get data on, which is even in the summer of 2016, when I undertook this, I really believed this was the approach, but I also thought Fulham to be competitive would need massive, massive, massive changes. So in the summer of 2016, I brought in 14 new players. And often, eight or nine would be starting for the most part. There were a few players that remained. Tom Cairney we had just signed. And that again, I had just started to get involved around then and really believed in Tom Cairney. And that was somebody I had from not being the person who made the decisions and often getting, when I did try to suggest stuff here that last year, before I did become the director of football, a lot of this stuff I had said we should do had worked out very well, like signing Tom Cairney.
And a lot of the stuff I said we should not do had not worked out as well. So there were a number of players that came in in the year before I took over that I also kind of suggested I wanted to keep that I kept. And so there were a few players I did really like, and we had a goalkeeper that was from the academy, Marcus Bettinelli. And we signed another goalkeeper, David Button, and brought in a bunch of outfield players, including Stefan Johansen, who played for us for many years and plays now for QPR, and Kevin McDonald, who was a defensive midfielder, played for us for many years. And there were a number of players on loan, including a couple of Chelsea players that Mike Ryan on this show was a big fan of, Lucas Piazón and Tomas Kalas.
And of course, and you guys, I know, Mike has always asked me about those guys and kept in touch, but also brought in a lot of important players that are with us today and have done important things for us, and guys that even started for us in this recent run of games, like Neeskens Kebano, who's been a critical player for us through the recent years, and also Denis Odoi.
Chris Wittyngham:
Who was huge in that run to the playoff promotion in ‘20, right?
Tony Khan:
Yes, absolutely.
Chris Wittyngham:
Put a couple of brilliant free kicks, I remember.
Tony Khan:
Yeah. Thanks Chris. And absolutely, he did. And I have a story about that when the time comes. And Denis Odoi also who's played at right back, center back and even covered at left back at times, really that I think changed the club and transformed the team. We had finished 20th the year before and Slaviša Jokanović was our coach. And we made a great run that first year that I had taken over. We finished sixth and we went to the playoff and we were actually the online, I saw the odds-on favorite to win the playoff, even though we had snuck in because we were so hot. And I think they really liked the squad too, and our form and Slav was just doing really well with the team. And it was disappointing. We had a call go against us, but we lost at Reading in the semifinal.
And then the next year we came back and acquired some new players and then had a huge transfer in January and brought in on loan Aleksandar Mitrovic, which I did truly at the 11th hour, because it was pretty close to the 11 pm deadline. And we didn't even have time to do a physical on Mitro, but it was just a loan. I mean it wasn't the full transfer investment yet where you would've really needed it with the eight-figure investment to do some kind of physical. This was a loan agreement and it was very important for us to get it done. And he was actually going to go back to Anderlecht, on loan from Newcastle, back to his old club where he'd scored a lot of goals for Anderlecht, and something happened. And he was there at Anderlecht and it just, I think financially it didn't work out.
So we were there and we were there ready to do it. And I think Anderlecht had already done the physical on him, and their doctor was willing to talk to our doctor and say he's good. And that was good enough for me. And I really wanted to get him in. I really believed in Mitrovic, and Slaviša Jokanović, also big fan of Mitrovic and had talked to him. And so he came.
(The rest of the interview is for paid subscribers.)
Chris Wittyngham:
This is going to sound ridiculous, but one of the best center forward displays I've seen in person, I have not admittedly not seen enough, but we saw him in a game against Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds the year that they got promoted. We saw him in a game, and he was amazing on that day.
Tony Khan:
He's having an amazing season. For those who don't know, we're 17 games in. Again, I said we're on this amazing run of six straight wins and five straight clean sheets. And outscoring the opponents 21-1 in those games. But through our 17 games, as I say this, Mitro has 20 goals.
Chris Wittyngham:
Wow. That's crazy.
Tony Khan:
I believe he's the leading scorer in Europe. I don't know if anybody else is on 20 right now. I haven't seen it. It'd be a good thing for you to check right now.
Chris Wittyngham:
I will check starting first with Robert Lewandowski. I want to get back to something you mentioned, which is you had kind of developed this method of marrying scouting with analytics, and it informs the way that you run your team. Without giving the secrets away of how that system works, can you kind of outline what the philosophy is when you go, when you identify a need in your playing squad, how do you go about not only beginning a transfer and saying, "I want this player," but then I think a lot of fans might not know the anatomy of a transfer. How do transfers go down?
Tony Khan:
Well, whether you're a fan of English sport, European sport, or American sports or wherever you consume your sports, I think transfers and trades go down in similar ways. Free agency, a transfer is unique. The clubs have to be in agreement, the two clubs in the deal, but also the players have to be onside. It's really important. And you have to have a good club. You have to run a good club where people want to come there and also where people want to deal with you and negotiate with you. And so we've always been fair to deal with, and I think have brought in a lot of really good players over the years, and that's why we're having good success now. So I had mentioned before that playoff, my first year we finished sixth, we came back the next year, acquired Mitrovic, went on a run of 23 unbeaten—19 wins, four draws—down the end of the season up to the last game. We actually did lose the last game of the season to Birmingham.
But we went into the playoff and we did, as you described, that very unnerving playoff, it was a very, very tight game. And it was 1-0, we beat Aston Villa, but we had Denis Odoi, who I just mentioned before. He is great player, but it was a scary moment. He got sent off, and we played over 20 minutes out there with 10 men and we hung on for a 1-0 win versus Aston Villa. We got promoted. And that season I made investment in a lot of players, including Mitrovic, who's on fire for us now, and Frank Zambo Anguissa, who's playing really well. He's out on loan at Napoli right now. He's a great player. Jean Michaël Seri, who's playing for us right now, is playing really well. Joe Bryan, who was a big hero for us in the Championship. We spent a lot of money, and unfortunately the team did not stay up, and made changes in coaching.
And then the next year in the Championship, again, we were promoted again a year later, but it was during COVID. So we sat out where there was no football being played anywhere for many months. And then in the summer of 2020 came back for the restart. And it was a very different game.
Chris Wittyngham:
How so?
Tony Khan:
Well, I've sidetracked from your question about my approach, but I want to get back to where I am now before we get into it. So and I will answer about marrying scouting and statistics, but I think it's important to look, because I've had a lot of different experiences with it and I've learned a lot and refined this, but before I go too far, so we did not stay up and the team went down and the following season we did get back up.
It was a very different game, as I was saying. And you asked me how so, and I'll answer that one first, even though it's the second question you asked and I still haven’t answered the first one. It was very different. Obviously, it was bizarre playing for a while with no fans, but also when we first came back, I mean, there was the drinks break, and that was different, and it was almost quarters instead of halves. So that was a big part of it. It was very strange, and a lot of players have been off for a long time. And people, I think, responded to the time off in different ways. Some people came back more fit than others and our team I think did a good job. And we went to that playoff and won the playoff. And then again we were in the Premier League. And to answer your first question, I thought we made a lot of progress and the team was much more competitive and we had a better squad for the Premier League the second time around.
I really felt we did. And the players of that team, a lot of them are doing well for us right now at Fulham, and the ones that were on loan to us and didn't stay obviously, Alphonse Aréola and Joachim Andersen, they were doing well for other teams after we weren't able to stay up. And now I think again, we made progress. And going back to talking about using both data analytics and scouting to evaluate players, and then combining them, kind of aggregating all the information and making the decision from there, it's important to me. And a lot of the transfers that have worked out for us were a judgment call. I mean, really all transfers are a judgment call. There's a lot of players out there that have scouting evaluations on them. There's only so many that have an approved grade.
So I try not to look too far into guys with terrible, terrible scouting, but sometimes there's a player with great statistics and you have to ask the question, what's going on here? And a lot of times the answer is the scouts are right. Maybe there's a reason on the team when you look into it why there's some kind of selection bias going on that could prejudice the data. But it's much, much, much more often than not, you see that the statistics do give a true picture of the player, and more often than not. And that's why I try to make a judgment call off them. And so we've done a lot since the summer 2016 up through now, I've done a ton of transfers in and out. And I feel like now the squad is as strong as it's ever been and have made progress building with a mixture of relying on the scouting and the analytics.
And I think it's a good marriage of the two. And when you bring both in, it also helps when you have a lot of players with statistics. There's really more players that have data from all the different leagues across the world, because there's so many football leagues to track that you can find players that don't have scouting and get them scouted. And that's where a lot of our successes have come and getting players and saying, "Hey, this player has really good data. We should look at this player." And the scouts do a good job because there are players that they say are, "This guy's a player we want to pursue." And there are players they say that, "I don't see this player."
And Marco Silva has been such a phenomenal head coach for us. He's come in with a coaching staff and a coaching philosophy. And I've just really enjoyed working with him and been doing Zooms on transfers and talking and texting all the time. And I just think the command of the squad he has is phenomenal and he's a phenomenal person, and it was a huge acquisition for Fulham. And what he's brought to the club is exactly what we needed. There were a lot of players I really wanted to keep at the club, and he's been a huge part. I've had good relationships with our players, and a player who we talked a lot about it. I think both of us publicly, is Aleksandar Mitrovic.
He just recently extended his contract. And I was really happy to even before Marco had come in, I had been talking to him about that, and we had made a lot of progress. And I know he wasn't happy with how last season ended. None of us were. And he wanted to play more of a part in the squad. And I thought Mitrovic absolutely needed to be a person we involve as much as we can. He works really hard, and he's been a huge part when we've had success and we owe a lot to him, and I'm very grateful for Mitrovic.
Chris Wittyngham:
So obviously, you change manager in between seasons. How did you go about finding Marco Silva? What are the aspects of a manager that matter to you when you're interviewing? Because I imagine you're scouting as well, you can pick from hundreds of managers around the world.
Tony Khan:
Well, for example, we looked at data and we looked at playing styles and we looked at our own personnel. And taking the style of football that our players, when they'd been successful, had played, and looking at tactics and also track record and then personal relationships. I really like Marco Silva. I first met him over three years ago when we played Everton, when he was the manager of Everton. And he'd managed teams in England and he had great references, and the data really was very high on him. And we had reached out and he was very interested. I think it's just been a great fit, and I'm very grateful that he came and he's been great for the club.
Chris Wittyngham:
When you say the data, because I think there is a conversation a lot about which statistics matter. You might have your own personal metrics that you yourself come up with.
Tony Khan:
We do have our own personal metrics.
Chris Wittyngham:
But of publicly available data that's out there, is there one or two things that you pick out and go, well, that's actually noteworthy? There's a lot of conversation about xG. There's a lot of conversations about other stuff StatsBomb and a lot of these websites that put stuff out there.
Tony Khan:
I think there's a lot of people who put player grades out there, and most of them have a lot of positives. I think there's a lot of player grades that are publicly available, and you can argue about which one's the best, and some of the publicly available stuff will lead you in a good direction. So we've developed our own stats, but there's tons of stuff online that fans can look at that grades players and a lot of that stuff is a good indicator too. But we also utilize our own scouting information. We had looked at teams that he had coached and their success and also looked at how he set his teams up and how we thought our team had succeeded and what I thought would be a good plan for us to succeed and hopefully get promoted this year.
Chris Wittyngham:
Is that amount of possession, formations?
Tony Khan:
Absolutely. There’s possession and formation components and looking at again, our personnel, the players in our squad that we've made big investments in, and we think are big assets who Marco agrees with us. And I think we're very much aligned. I mean, when I talk through the squad with Marco, I mean, we agree on everything and I think it's been a really good relationship he's had with myself and the board and with the scouting and operations people. I think he's also seen one of the things about it is when you just have data, I mean, there's going to be a lot of unrealistic names, and you just have to get used to it when you see a list of players. And some of these are great players that probably aren't going to be coming to Fulham many times soon, but it gives you a big list to dig through.
And it covers leagues big and small, clubs big and small. And when you shop smart, you can find things and even dealing with big clubs. For example, Tosin [Adarabioyo] came in and he was from Manchester City and I scouted him myself against Blackburn. I was there at the Cottage a few seasons ago. Of course, the season that got interrupted by COVID where we eventually did win the playoff and Tosin played for Manchester City, but he had been out on loan. And I had seen him play for Blackburn and the data was again, very high on him, particularly the season he had for Blackburn. And he wasn't a player that was going to be in the Manchester City squad anytime soon. And we got a great deal on him as a club, and he's been a great player for us and is a great one, not only in the present, but also for the future. He's a great young player.
So that was, I think, doing a smart deal with a big club, but we've also brought in players from a lot of small clubs in smaller leagues. So I think when you have a good network of scouts who work really hard and travel and cast a wide net with data, you can have some success, but there's no question. The Premier League is in my opinion the hardest league in the world. And I think the data would agree that it's as competitive and strong a league as there is. And there's so many good clubs in the Premier League. And while it is very tough to stay up and we haven't been able to do it the two years I've been up, we've made progress. I thought we got a lot closer, and I look forward to hopefully having another chance to do it. And every year we've been in the Championship, like I said, we’ve finished in the playoffs that first year and then since then have gotten promoted each time. So I do think hopefully we have a good chance and can build on what we've done.
Chris Wittyngham:
You have two American players that have recently featured on the national team. Fulhamerica has been a thing all the way going back to when Brian McBride was at Fulham and there's always kind of been an American representative, Clint Dempsey, and on, and on, and on. But I want to talk about one, that reputation and two, the current guys you have in particular, Antonee Robinson, who's kind of become the first choice left back for the U.S. squad.
Tony Khan:
Well, he's a tremendous player, and he's very important player at Fulham. And he's somebody that not only is he, again, a great player for the present, but he is also a great player for the future. He's a great young player for Fulham and a great young player for the U.S. And Fulham have had a great history of bringing in American players long before I was at the club and long before I was even working anywhere near the transfers, let alone running the transfers. So that's something Fulham has a great history of. About a year before I took over, another player, he had really good data. So it was one of the transfers we had done that I was in favor of when I first started evaluating the data, but was not yet actually in charge.
Chris Wittyngham:
He almost went to AC Milan.
Tony Khan:
Well, that was before we got it. That was before. Yeah. And we were fortunate that he did not, and getting him in from Wigan, it was a great move, I think. And he's been a great player and I really value him. He's been a great player for the United States. There's no other club in Europe that has had multiple players from America win player of the season for the club, and Fulham actually has had three players from America win player of the season with Clint Dempsey, Brian McBride and Tim Ream. And there are, of course, in addition to those three we mentioned Antonee Robinson. There are so many other American players present and past, and I think future that have played for Fulham. And it's a great tradition that we have, they call it Fulhamerica.
Chris Wittyngham:
Fulhamerica. Yeah.
Tony Khan:
And I think it's great. So here in the U.S. there are a lot of Fulham supporters and if there's anybody looking for a club to support in England, I think Fulham's a great club to support. And again, it's a great time to get in because we've won six straight and playing very well and have a lot of great players for the future and a great coach and a lot of fun things happening around the club and the redevelopment of the Cottage. And we're just a fun club to support. So hopefully you maybe make a new supporter out of this with talking to you.
Chris Wittyngham:
So on MLS, a lot of MLS academies are bringing through young players who are getting sold to Juventus, and American players are playing for Barcelona and RB Salzburg and Leipzig and these big clubs. What have you made of that kind of influx of talent going from MLS to abroad?
Tony Khan:
It is interesting. I was just looking at Reggie Cannon, but we had Kenny Tete was going to be back pretty soon from his injury, and he's been starting for us. He's a great player, Kenny Tete, and has started for the Dutch national team and is a great, great player for Fulham, again, for the present and for the future. I just think the world of Kenny Tete. And he was out injured, but we knew he'd be back within a couple months. And Denis Odoi had done very well for us in the past. And I thought Denis Odoi could more than cover it. And also he's always a great player for us. And he’s started for us through much of this great run we've been on. So absolutely there's been some great players out of MLS to come abroad recently. And the American players in general, I think, are getting better and better.
And that's a product of it that MLS is getting some of those players at a young age, but also some of those players are going abroad at a very young age. So it's a mixture. I think America's developing more players. Some of them are ending up in MLS academies with MLS teams, and some of those players are going abroad at a young age, and Fulham has had some young American players come into our academy also. And, Marlon Fossey is with us and has not yet really been playing for the first team, but is a player that is absolutely a first-team footballer who's one to watch right back for the future for the U.S. also.
Chris Wittyngham:
Couple more. What's the biggest difference for you between running an American sports team and a sports team in England?
Tony Khan:
Well, I mean obviously, the biggest difference, I think, is they're different sports. But the difference between the leagues I think, we talk so much about it and belabored the idea of relegation and promotion and the ups and downs, but that is the biggest difference. The idea that you can finish near the bottom of a league and get the top draft pick and end up with Trevor Lawrence and it can change your life and your team and everything versus that can mean a relegation. It's very different. So the stakes and the outcomes are completely different. And the sports themselves are very different. And the fans. There's a lot of similarities. I mean, everybody's human beings and they love their teams, but there's differences too.
Chris Wittyngham:
And last one, the next time you are in the Premier League, what have you identified as something that will allow you to finish 17th or better? What have the two experiences for you in the Premier League meant in terms of growth, in terms of what you can learn the next time that you're there, you can actually stay up?
Tony Khan:
I believe that the squad has gotten stronger and I think we're in a great place right now with a great coach. I really believe we have a great chance to hopefully get promoted. I've always really enjoyed working with the coaches, whether it was Slaviša Jokanović or very briefly with Claudio Ranieri.
Chris Wittyngham:
Now the Watford manager.
Tony Khan:
Yes. And with Scott Parker, and now with Marco Silva. And I think with Marco, he has embraced the analytics and the squad that he inherited more so than any other manager I've worked with. And, he has just got a great rapport with the squad, but a great command of the squad. And I think more so than any time in the time I've been there since the summer of 2016 up till now, late 2021, I feel like the squad's playing very well and they're built to succeed in the future.
And if we do go up, I think we can make some smart acquisitions to build with this team. But I think we have the strongest core to build on and philosophically, organizationally, with Marco here I just really enjoy working with Marco Silva, and I feel like organizationally and on the pitch with the squad, again, for now and for the future, it's built better than ever. So I think we can take what we've done in the past, and we've been building and building, building on it. And now hopefully we're in a better position where now I hope, first of all, we do get promoted and we can continue also building on the early work we've done this season. But then also get back to the Premier League and build on the work we've done over the years.
Chris Wittyngham:
Tony Khan, appreciate the time.
Tony Khan:
Thank you very much. It was really nice being on with you.