Felix Magath has been dismissed as the Fulham manager after what he described as a “catastrophe” of a season so far and in the wake of mounting disquiet among many of the players over his methods.

The London club have appointed Kit Symons as the caretaker manager for Saturday’s Championship fixture against Blackburn Rovers at Craven Cottage and they said, in a statement, that the chairman, Shahid Khan, would “personally and immediately lead a thorough search” for Magath’s permanent successor.

Symons, the club’s Under-21 manager, is among the contenders for the job, along with Steve Clarke, the former West Bromwich Albion manager, and Tim Sherwood, formerly of Tottenham Hotspur. The former Fulham player Danny Murphy told the BBC he would consider the position. “If they did want to speak to me, of course I’d be open-minded to that,” he said. Khan wants somebody who can nurture players from the club’s academy.

“This is an unfortunate but necessary change,” Khan said. “I am doing what I feel is right and needed for Fulham football club, for today as well as tomorrow. I thank our supporters for standing by us during these most difficult of times on the pitch and promise better days ahead.”

Magath, who arrived in February as the club’s third manager of last season but was unable to prevent their relegation from the Premier League, watched his team lose 5-3 at Nottingham Forest on Wednesday night.

There were glimmers of hope for him as Fulham came back from 2-0 down to lead 3-2, doubling their league goals tally for the season in the process, before they conceded three times in the final 11 minutes.

Magath could cite as mitigation the harsh penalty award that gave Forest their second goal and the referee Darren Deadman’s failure to send off Danny Fox for a last-man foul on the Fulham striker Hugo Rodallega in the second half.

But it still added up to a sixth league defeat in seven matches for Fulham to leave them at the foot of the table with a single point and spark further conference calls among the club’s United States-based hierarchy over Magath’s future.

Khan, who took over from Mohamed Al Fayed in July last year, sacked Martin Jol as the manager in December and then Rene Meulensteen, and he had been loth to act again. He has bought into a long-term project at Craven Cottage and does not want to be seen to be constantly chopping and changing.

Moreover, he had backed Magath’s overhaul of the squad after relegation, in which the manager was allowed to bring in 11 players, including the £11m striker Ross McCormack, and ship out a host of others. Many of them were always likely to leave but others, such as David Stockdale and Steve Sidwell, were more of a surprise.

On the other hand Khan had to consider a fanbase in mutinous mood and players who have been left drained and bewildered by Magath, whose fitness-based training sessions and disciplinary code are unforgiving.

Fulham supporters have coined the phrase “Felix Bingo” and many of the players have not known whether they will be selected from one week to the next. The club used 39 players in the Premier League last season – a record for the division – and Magath has picked 29 in seven Championship matches, although not Bryan Ruiz, who starred for Costa Rica at the World Cup.

Ruiz had been made to train with the development squad during the summer transfer window – along with Fernando Amorebieta and Kostas Mitroglou – as he hoped to get a move to a top-flight club but no agreement could be reached.

Ruiz played and scored for Costa Rica against Guatemala on Saturday, meaning that he missed Fulham’s 3-0 defeat at Reading, and he was not in the squad at Forest. He has said that he intends to honour the final year of his contract and he will surely come into the reckoning for the Blackburn game.

Mitroglou was loaned to his former club Olympiakos and Amorebieta was brought in from the cold against Forest for his first appearance of the season. There had been a lack of any discernible pattern to Magath’s selection policy, with one example being the treatment of Dan Burn, who was frozen out of the opening games of the season before being brought back as a starter.

Brede Hangeland, whose contract at Craven Cottage was torn up in the summer before a move to Crystal Palace, had been outspoken in his criticism of Magath and his views were shared by many of Fulham’s senior professionals.

“He was very difficult to work with,” Hangeland had said. “His main tool is to try to physically and mentally batter his players and then hopefully get some results out of that. Is that the right fit for English football? I don’t think so. Rather than help us avoid relegation, it made things worse. He is not the right man to get the club back up and things will get worse before they get better.”