‘We’ve bonded under Ranieri’
RYAN SESSEGNON says Claudio Ranieri is already transforming Fulham from a bunch of strangers into a band of brothers.
Ranieri won on his debut in the Craven Cottage dugout as Fulham stopped the rot after seven straight defeats.
Southampton’s Stuart Armstrong opened the scoring and then equalised after Aleksandar Mitrovic and Andre Schurrle struck for Fulham. But the hosts found the strength of character to win it when Mitrovic scored his second.
Sessegnon put the victory down to all the work Ranieri has done bringing a squad fractured by so many summer arrivals back together.
“He’s changed a lot of things,” said Sessegnon. “We eat together, we leave together now. Before we used to come up to the canteen and eat and then just go.
“Now you can’t leave until everyone’s finished. It’s about RANIERI
FULHAM SOUTHAMPTON
keeping the team bonded. The warm-ups in training are all together too. Literally, we all have to follow each other in a pattern.
“Little things like that help on the pitch. He wants us to defend as a team.”
Ranieri, whose predecessor Slavisa Jokanovic spent £100million on new signings, still has a long way to go to get the Cottagers out of trouble, but this was a good way to start ahead of Sunday’s trip to his former club Chelsea. Sessegnon said: “Now we need to keep going and not get ahead of ourselves. It’s going to be a tough game against Chelsea.
“Everyone was excited when Claudio came in. Everyone knows what he did with Leicester and Chelsea so for someone of his calibre to come in and help the team is very exciting.”