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Ranieri’s Leicester blueprint will help Fulham tighten up and climb the table
Early on in Leicester’s now legendary 2015/16 season, Claudio Ranieri’s side struggled badly defensively and only kept their first clean sheet on 25 October 2015.
The Foxes conceded 17 goals in their opening ten matches before Ranieri settled on a more defensively minded pair of full-backs in Danny Simpson and Christian Fuchs and created a much sturdier back four.
We all know how the rest of the season panned out once that solid bedrock was established and now Ranieri takes over a Fulham side which is leaking goals at an alarming rate.
The malaise is deeper, but Ranieri has shown his ability to tighten up a defence in a side that was struggling and that will stand him in very good stead at Craven Cottage.
The Italian will arguably working with a more talented array of raw materials than the defence he inherited at Leicester, but the key is deciding on a formula and sticking to it.
Slavisa Jokanovic’s problem was almost that he had too many options. He would choose a back four for a game and after they failed to keep the goals out, he had expensively recruited options knocking on his door asking to be put in for the next game and the chopping and changing ultimately cost him his job.
If Ranieri follows his Leicester blueprint, he should not make similar mistakes.