MARTIN SAMUEL ON THE MESS AT FULHAM

SomeTImeS the building burns to the ground. That’s the reality. It isn’t that the firefighters did not do their job. It isn’t that they don’t know what they are doing. Sometimes the fire is just too big.

Claudio Ranieri took over at Fulham on November 14. At the time the club were heading for the third lowest points total in Premier League history. They were bottom of the league, with five points from 12 games, at an average of 0.41 and an aggregate over the season of 15.58.

In 2005-06, Sunderland went down with 15 points; Derby were relegated in 2007-08 with 11. Fulham were in that ball park. Check the record book under ‘mugs’.

So it was always going to be hard. As it has proved. Under Ranieri, Fulham took 12 points from 16 matches, at an average of 0.75. An improvement, but nowhere near good enough. If they averaged it across 38 matches, they would still finish on 28.5 points.

As no club with less than 31 points has ever stayed up in the modern era, Fulham would almost certainly be relegated just the same. meaning nobody can argue Ranieri did a fabulous job, just that the blaze was raging long before he was summoned to it.

Still, this is football, so there must be a scapegoat and as we are in the time of the three-manager season Ranieri will not actually have the privilege of taking Fulham down, let alone rebuilding them for a return.

His departure was confirmed yesterday afternoon with Scott Parker taking over, making Fulham the first Premier League club in the last 13 seasons to twice burn through three full-time bosses in one campaign. Presuming Fulham’s season pans out as expected only one club can claim to have stayed up using this policy.

In 2006-07, Charlton got through Iain Dowie, Les Reed and it was Alan Pardew who ultimately took the fall, in 19th place. In 2008-09, Kevin Keegan and Joe Kinnear eventually gave way to Alan Shearer, relegated with Newcastle in 18th position.

The same season Portsmouth finished 14th with Harry Redknapp, Tony Adams and Paul Hart sharing the duties, but Redknapp

had left for a better position at Tottenham with Portsmouth stable, so it wasn’t quite the same.

Fulham themselves were relegated under Felix Magath at the end of the 2013-14 season after sacking Martin Jol and Rene Meulensteen.

This leaves Swansea as the sole survivors — Francesco Guidolin succeeded by Bob Bradley and finally Paul Clement in 2016-17, finishing 15th. Yet Clement was installed on January 3 — not with March as his first working day, as it is with Parker.

Fulham’s recruitment policy — Roster Improvement Through Analysis, or RITA for short — has been exposed as hopelessly flawed, identifying bad goalkeepers and high-maintenance pests because their numbers looked good.

In the summer, Fulham became the first promoted club to spend more than £100million in the transfer market, a wonderfully ambitious yet hugely problematic investment because it involved bedding in a new team in highly competitive surroundings.

It is plain that upgrades were required as no team that let in 46 goals in a Championship season — more than Millwall — are ready to take on the Premier League. Yet Fulham’s overhaul was undertaken late, with £80m of talent arriving in the last week and £60m on the last day. Is it any wonder Slavisa Jokanovic struggled to make it work.

Into this mess, three months later, walked Ranieri, the man we are now to believe didn’t know what he was doing. Yet we know he knew what he was doing because less than three years ago he pulled off the greatest achievement in the history of English football by winning the league with Leicester.

That cannot be fluked. Ranieri took a team who were favourites to be relegated, and outwitted some of the richest clubs in Europe for nine months.

He may not have favoured local hero Ryan Sessegnon at Fulham, earning the wrath of the fans, but Sessegnon started in the majority of the games that had Fulham in crisis under Jokanovic — except the single league match they won in that time, against Burnley, and the draw at Brighton.

So maybe Ranieri did know what he was doing and it is Fulham that do not.

Maybe, as a manager who has won the league, he might have been the best option for Fulham as they try to regroup in the Championship. Maybe, starting from scratch in a new season, he would have a chance.

We will never know. With the house ablaze, Fulham blamed the man holding the hosepipe, as if he started it.