Martin Jol sacked as Fulham manager as Rene Meulensteen takes charge

Fulham have sacked manager Martin Jol with Rene Meulensteen assuming responsibility for the first team with immediate effect.

Meulensteen is adamant that he did not expect this chain of events. "I totally disagree with that because it has been a quite long process of me bringing myself into Fulham and I spoke numerous times with people at Fulham," Meulensteen told Sky Sports News. "I have known Martin for many, many years and my departure from Manchester United took some time but eventually I felt it was the right thing to do to come to Fulham and to help Martin at Fulham Football Club. "It was definitely not something that I was anticipating. We wanted to turn this corner together. Meulensteen, who has already spoken to Jol following his departure, is to hold talks with Fulham chief executive Alistair Mackintosh on Sunday evening and he believes he can turn around the struggling Premier League club's fortunes. He said: "We know what position we are in. It's a position that Fulham don't want to be in, the staff don't want to be in and the players don't want to be in. "But this is where we are at and if I am given a responsibility of making sure that I carry out the manager's job for the foreseeable future then we have to do our utmost to get Fulham back up the table. "The most important thing is that we close our ranks, we know where we are in the league and it is not the place Fulham wants to be. "It's a massive challenge but at the end of the day when you are faced with a challenge like this it comes down to making sure that you get the basic things right."