After posing for pictures on the wooden seats of a sun-soaked Craven Cottage, Slavisa Jokanovic breaks into something approaching a love letter to English football.

‘It really is one of the best stadiums here,’ he smiles. ‘It’s a postcard venue, beautiful and romantic. The sun is shining and it’s beside the River Thames. Jose Mourinho says the same to me. As a kid in the former Yugoslavia, the English game was my first contact with foreign football. I remember black and white crackling pictures of Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. I have memories of Kevin Keegan scoring goals at the Kop.

‘I didn’t have the chance to watch Real Madrid so it was all about England. I only saw Barcelona and Real when I moved to Spain in the 1990s. When I think of English football, it’s Brian Clough at Forest.

Slavisa Jokanovic arrived at Craven Cottage last December to a club that was struggling

It is his seventh job in management after spells in Serbia, Thailand, Bulgaria, Spain and Israel

Scott Malone reacts to a missed chance during Fulham's recent clash with Birmingham

Jokanovic counts heavyweight managers Jose Mourinho (left) and Pep Guardiola as friends

‘When I think of English stadiums, it’s the Kop at Anfield, Highbury and the romance of Craven Cottage, not the Emirates or whatever the new stadiums are called.

‘I don’t see the Emirates as symbolic of English football. I was managing in Israel last year and found Luton against Cambridge on TV. Even at that level, stadiums are full and people really care.’

Fulham is Jokanovic’s seventh job in management after spells in Serbia, Thailand, Bulgaria, Spain, Israel and Watford.

After inheriting a team three points above the relegation zone, results began to improve

The Londoners ended the campaign 11 points from danger, finished 20th in the table

Jokanovic, 48, arrived at Fulham last December, inheriting a team three points above the relegation zone. Results picked up sufficiently to end the campaign 11 points from danger but Fulham finished 20th, the club’s lowest placing since 1999.

‘I thought the job would be more simple,’ he says. ‘For a few months, it was really hard. I realised major work was needed, on and off the field.

‘Weird things were happening. We had to score three goals to win a game. We conceded 35 goals from set-pieces and the next worst team only conceded 20. We conceded a lot of penalties.

Fulham lost crucial playes in Moussa Dembele (pictured) and Ross McCormack in pre-season

A win against Burton on Tuesday could lift Jokanovic's side to second in the Championship

‘At the training ground, I needed new pitches. The owner was a bit surprised because it had never been mentioned to him before that the pitches weren’t right. But they weren’t. It wasn’t a vanity thing. It was an important step to improve the squad and play the right way. It was a huge benefit for the club. We now have excellent conditions to train.’

The new surfaces at Motspur Park are reaping rewards. Fulham have started brightly, they are in a play-off position and their possession play has proved pivotal.

Jokanovic, who calls himself an ‘artificial Spaniard’ having played there for much of the 90s, has seen his side make 3,235 passes, more than any other team in the division this season.

He first fell for the capital when he arrived at Chelsea in 2001 and quickly realised the demands of English football.

Jokanovic has encouraged skipper Scott Parker and his team-mates to socialise more

‘I was 32 by that stage — plus VAT,’ he jokes. ‘It was too fast, too quick. I found it aggressive, I came from Spain where the idea was never to lose the ball. At Chelsea, we were going through the air rather than the ground. It was a very old team — the Ken Bates era. Many coaches have come out: Albert Ferrer, Gianfranco Zola, Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink, Gus Poyet.’

A win against Burton on Tuesday night could lift Fulham to second in the table. It has been a surprising start for a club who didn’t always appear to be on an upward trajectory during the summer. Fulham began pre-season with a threadbare squad and lost the providers of 40 goals from last season with the departure of Moussa Dembele to Celtic and Ross McCormack to Aston Villa. Nineteen players left and just 14 arrived.

‘The team have begun the season with a different mentality,’ he says. ‘We started pre-season with nine or 10 players. If you’d asked me on day one of pre-season, I couldn’t have told you how the squad would look. But we had a plan. The young players came in.

‘We lost McCormack but we have tightened up and play as a group.

‘We have won two games 1-0 this season. We had to learn to see games out. If Manchester United are 1-0 up against Sunderland, they see out the storm and boom, boom, it’s 2-0, 3-0. We need this ability to suffer and bear things out. A lot of it is confidence. We came back to draw against Cardiff. Last year there would have been no reaction.’

There was further tension when Jokanovic criticised the club’s recruitment policy. He went public with his appraisal of Craig Kline, an American director of statistical recruitment who signs off every signing the club makes.

As transfers stalled, Jokanovic suggested openly to the media they’d be better off asking questions to ‘this guy — sitting in the directors’ box.’ Fulham had, for example, received a glowing recommendation from Mourinho for United’s starlet Andreas Perreira but Kline’s analytics did not support the move as the player did not have enough data to be assessed.

‘I am always fighting for the team,’ says Jokanovic. ‘I want to make the fans happy. The club has made an important effort to cover the squad, I’m happy.’

Jokanovic (left) in action for Chelsea against Luis Boa Morte's Fulham back in 2001

Fulham began pre-season with a threadbare squad but have impressed so far this term

Jokanovic achieved promotion with Watford in 2015 but decided to leave after receiving a contract offer worth half what the lowest-paid Premier League manager earned at the time. He has unfinished business in England and is in touch with his luminary friends including Mourinho and Pep Guardiola.

‘Radomir Antic, the former Real Madrid and Barcelona coach, was living in Madrid very close to me,’ he says. ‘I had a thousand chats about football with him. I don’t think he has ever watched a film in his life, you go into his house and it’s football, football, football. I have spoken with Diego Simeone, I have observed Carlo Ancelotti’s training sessions.

‘I have some very close mutual friends with Pep Guardiola — Jose Mourinho came along to Craven Cottage last season when he was between jobs. I am not asking for secrets, just normal questions and observations.

‘Most coaches are open to exchange opinions. I’m not their rival so they have less to hide. Mourinho says to me, “These aren’t observations to fix your life, but a different angle”. I listen but make my own decisions.

Jokanovic has seen his side make 3,235 passes, more than any other team in the division

‘Last year, we had a bad run. I asked Scott Parker to take the boys out for a meal, to let them spend time together without the staff and see if they could clear things.

‘It’s hard these days. The players are on their phones, tablets and everything. We are finding time for each other. Where we eat, for example, at the training ground is a pretty small space. Last season there were too many people there, so players were seeing it was busy and heading straight home.

‘Now we have a room exclusively for the first-team group to exchange opinion and eat together and get to know each other.’