Claudio Ranieri has made a return to English football this morning to take the reins at Fulham. He’ll replace the departed Slaviša Jokanović at Craven Cottage and take on the Serbian’s fully-stuffed in-tray, with the club sitting rock bottom of the Premier League.
The Italian, 67, famously won the competition in the 2015-16 season with Leicester City, a 5,000/1 eventually that confounded pundits and bookmakers alike.
As a first order of business the wily old coach will, of course, be looking to get the Cottagers out of immediate trouble. Sitting on a measly five points, they’re still odds-against to keep their head above water on their first season back in the top division, having priced up at 7/5 with Ladbrokes.
A talented but underperforming squad that includes Jean Michaël Seri, Aleksandar Mitrović and Ryan Sessegnon, may be able to achieve better than that if their new gaffer can do a bit of shoring up of their defense and they’re a meaty 50/1 to finish in the top half this season.
But what about something for the real dreamers out there?
The west Londoners are, perhaps prophetically, chalked up at the same price to bring home the title next season as the Foxes were back in that reality-bursting season.
Alex Apati of Ladbrokes said: "Ranieri's appointment has forced us to turn our attention to Fulham achieving the unthinkable next season. It's only fitting they're the first team since Leicester to be priced 5000/1 to win the title."
He couldn’t do it again, could he?
No.
