Fulham need Ranieri to lock the door after showing Slavisa exit

SLAVISA JOKANOVIC insisted last week he was a “fantastic coach”, and that his players had to stand up and take responsibility for Fulham’s desperate position.

That uncharacteristic outburst came just before his last match in charge of Fulham, the 2-0 defeat at Liverpool on Sunday.

Unfortunately for the 50-year-old, the board had decided to take responsibility and were already lining up the candidates to replace him.

Jokanovic was a dead man walking even before he strode out on to the Anfield pitch, and yesterday morning the Serb was finally told his time in charge at Craven Cottage was over, with Claudio Ranieri, the former Chelsea and Leicester manager, coming in to replace him.

Yet there remains truth in Jokanovic’s claims; he is a fantastic coach.

For two-and-a-half years, having succeeded Kit Symons in December 2015, he rebuilt the team, hauling Fulham away from the bottom end of the Championship. He took them REPORTS to the play-offs in his first season and then again last season, winning promotion to the Premier League playing an attractive blend of attacking football.

But the step up to the top flight has proved terrible. Fulham lie bottom with just one win, and have conceded an alarming 31 goals. Only two teams in Premier League history have had fewer than Fulham’s five points at this stage.

But the seeds of this collapse were in the background even as Fulham beat Aston Villa in a memorable play-off final at Wembley last May.

Jokanovic had never been happy with the player recruitment model using stats-based analysis, overseen by the owner’s son Tony Khan. Tensions first surfaced when Khan’s partner in the analysis department, Craig Kline, was sacked after clashing with several senior figures in the club in November last year.

Following promotion, Jokanovic asked for a topclass ball-playing centre-back and a holding midfielder.

Fulham spent more than £100million on 13 new players but Jokanovic got neither of the two he wanted.

Some talented men arrived – Jean Michael Seri, Andre Schurrle, Alfie Mawson. But two new goalkeepers also turned up in Fabri and Sergio Rico, of whom Jokanovic apparently knew nothing. And two games into the season, goalkeeping coach Jose Sambade Carreira quit.

Significantly, the new contract Jokanovic had been offered at the end of last season remained unsigned. He had wanted a get-out clause, perhaps knowing what was coming.

But Jokanovic did not help himself either, with a constant series of changes to his line-ups. Unable to decide on which was his best formation as results dipped, not once in 12 games did he field the same defence.

The tinkering with the team – something Jokanovic did relatively little of in the Championship – did not help. Too often, Aleksandar Mitrovic was left isolated up front, and talented winger Ryan Sessegnon, 18, was confined to left-back.

It is somewhat ironic then that Ranieri, the arch-tinkerer at Chelsea, is the man who replaces him. The Italian was not first choice, with Arsene Wenger and former Monaco boss Leonardo Jardim both sounded out, but he was known to be keen on a return to English football.

That extraordinary title win at Leicester in 2015-16, when he steered a team who were 5,000-1 outsiders to one of the most remarkable triumphs in English football history, clinched the ‘multiyear’ deal Fulham offered Ranieri.

The 67-year-old, who has managed 16 clubs over 32 years as well as an unhappy spell with Greece, once said about managing: “First you need to lock the door of the house. If you don’t, robbers get in and take everything.”

He will need to do that fast at Fulham.