In the sunshine of Wembley Stadium on May 26, 38,000 Fulham fans' dreams turned into reality as they were promoted to the Premier League thanks to Tom Cairney's solitary goal.

It was the quintessential season of two halves the Cottagers were 17th in December before powering on a 23-game unbeaten run missing out on automatic promotion on the final day of the season before beating Aston Villa at the national stadium to secure their spot in the top flight of football four years after relegation under Felix Magath.

For even the most pessimistic of fans, the new season would surely be nothing like their last one in the top flight, where the side hired three different managers, the last of which turned out to be one of the worst managers in their history.

Fulham had an exciting young head coach in Slavisa Jokanovic who played a thrilling style of football that had earned the side plaudits across the country, they had Cairney who was the metronome to the orchestra and they had Ryan Sessegnon, the boy wonder who had banged in 16 goals in just his second season in men's football and who had the added benefit of being one of their own.

Further excitement followed as Fulham spent over £100million on new players in the summer, 12 to be precise, signing the likes of Jean-Michael Seri, who had nearly signed for Barcelona a year previously, and Aleksandar Mitrovic who had been so vital the previous season.

The previous two seasons was just the beginning, it seemed, and Fulham were ready to take on the Premier League and turn heads doing it.

But just six months later, that dream has turned into a horrible nightmare and the season is baring more similarities to the last campaign in the top flight than Fulham fans would like.

Jokanovic is gone, sacked after 15 matches in all competitions that saw him win just three times and replaced by Claudio Ranieri.

(Image: PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images)

Cairney is either warming the substitutes' bench or finding himself pushed out to the edges of the pitch in an unfamiliar right wing position.

And Sessegnon? He's started just two of the last nine games under Ranieri.

It's not the season that fans, or indeed the hierarchy at the club, envisioned when the first ball was kicked back in August against Crystal Palace.

So what has gone wrong in SW6?

Unfortunately, its been a catalogue of errors that has contributed to the demise of Fulham this season, from bad recruitment choices to poor hiring decisions with a bit of bad luck thrown in for good measure.

(Image: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

But to look at the issues we need to go back to when Tony Khan was appointed as Director of Football Operations.

Recruitment

Most fans' views is that the recruitment this year has a large part to play in the poor season Fulham are currently undergoing.

12 new players were signed in the summer for over £100million, but the vast majority of them have failed to have much of an impact, with the feeling being that the sheer volume brought into the club has upset the apple cart somewhat.

(Image: Scott Halleran/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, three players were signed in January, but two were wingers and one a defensive midfielder and the recruitment in that month failed to deal with the side's problems, which have clearly been defensive.

But for me, assessing the summer begins much further back and to do so, we need to look at how Fulham's Championship side was constructed.

Too much reliance on the loan system

During the Jokanovic reign at Fulham, which lasted just two and a bit years, 40 different players were brought into the club.

Last season alone saw the club sign eight different loan players over the course of the season, with the side finishing the campaign with six loanees on their books.

That included Matt Targett, Aleksandar Mitrovic, Tomas Kalas, Lucas Piazon and Ollie Norwood, all of whom could be considered core members of the squad that saw the side promoted.

Once you lose those at the end of the season, Fulham were left with just 16 first team players - add to that the departure of Ryan Fredericks and you have just 15.

David Button moved on in the summer too while Rui Fonte was sent out on loan, and that leaves 13 players.

You're almost re-building from scratch every summer due to the number of loans in the group and it is by no means a way to build a side for continued success.

If you need something to contrast it with, Wolves signed 23 players in the 2017/18 season as they won the Championship, but put the emphasis on signing their loanees permanently while adding the minimum to an already-established side.

Fulham still have six loanees in their squad this season, which means six spaces to fill once again in the summer, regardless of what happens.

(Image: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

Too many signings in the summer

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Come the end of the 2018 summer transfer window, most people, myself included, said what a good job Tony Khan and Fulham had done over the course of the window.

They'd made a statement by signing Seri & Sergio Rico, who had won the Europa League twice with Sevilla, but months on we can see it wasn't as good as we thought.

(Image: Christopher Lee/Getty Images)

Let's get some things out there though - no one can say that Shahid Khan and Tony didn't have the best interest of the club at heart.

Khan Snr backed the club massively and spent a lot of money while there was nothing to suggest at the time that these players were not good players.

However, the problem of building a side with too many loanees meant that there had to be a lot of new signings to make sure the squad was strong enough, meaning the number that came in was inevevitable.

You might be able to get away with that in the Championship, but the Premier League is a different kettle of fish and a newly formed side will only have one thing happen to them, and that's exactly what Fulham are finding out right now.

Losing Matt Targett and Fredericks was a huge loss and both were never really replaced properly - in a summer where over £100m had been spent, spending the extra five on Targett would've made little to no difference while Timothy Fosu-Mensah was not an adequate replacement for Fredericks.

And that leads us to the defence, an area everyone knew Fulham were weak in but one that didn't get sorted in the summer.

(Image: Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Alfie Mawson is a Premier League player, but he was signed with a serious knee injury and wouldn't be ready until September.

Calum Chambers was signed but the team found his influence better in a holding midfield role than in a central defensive capacity.

Maxime Le Marchand was signed but it seemed to be an add-on to the Seri deal, while Joe Bryan was signed on deadline day as an alternative to Targett.

What you're left with is an unknown defence heading into a Premier League season, and that is a recipe for disaster.

I'm unsure as to how much scouting was really done on the summer recruits and it's the signing of Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa that makes me think this.

Fulham played a 4-3-3 with a single defensive midfielder, any one could tell you that, but Anguissa was signed having never played as the holding midfielder by himself.

When running analytics or scouting, surely this would have come up? Wouldn't one of the first things you look at is whether a player can fit into the system your team deploys?

It was a series of errors during the summer and one that paved the foundations for the season Fulham are currently on.

A shambles of a pre-season

Fulham spent some time on a training camp in France during pre-season, here's who went on that trip.

Marcus Bettinelli, Cyrus Christie, Ryan Sessegnon, Denis Odoi, Ibrahima Cisse, Tim Ream. Moritz Jenz, Maxime Le Marchand, Neeskens Kebano, Stefan Johansen, Matt O'Riley, Jean-Michael Seri, Kevin McDonald, Tom Cairney, Luca de la Torre, Aboubakar Kamara, Jon Dagur Thorsteinsson, Rui Fonte, Mattias Kait, Steven Sessegnon, Marlon Fossey, Marcelo Djalo, Tyrese Francois and Marek Rodak.

Only three weeks later on the opening day, just ten of those players featured in the matchday squad for the defeat to Crystal Palace.

It was a shambles of a pre-season for Jokanovic and Fulham, who was forced to work with very little of a senior squad for the large part of the summer as Fulham's transfer business saw deals done extremely late in the window.

(Image: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

Fulham's defeat to Crystal Palace saw a back five of Fabri, Christie, Chambers, Le Marchand and Bryan, who had never played before together in their lives and had only met each other two days before.

Jokanovic came in for a lot of stick for not knowing his best XI, which was one of his faults this season, but he wasn't helped by the lack of a pre-season to discover what worked best with the core of a squad.

Instead of having a core that would then have a couple of more players added to by the start of the window, Fulham had a threadbare squad that would only become a full one a couple of days before the season started.

The old saying is 'fail to prepare, prepare to fail' and it couldn't be more apt to describe the pre-season the side had.

The recruitment and the lack of pre-season both led, in my eyes, to the massive defensive issues the club have struggled with all season long.

(Image: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Sacking Jokanovic and hiring Ranieri

The decision to sack Jokanovic in the middle of November was one that split fans - some felt the time was right to remove the head coach after a seven game winless run, while others felt sticking with him was the better option.

We'll never know if Jokanovic could've turned things around at Craven Cottage after Khan Snr sacked him, instead opting for Ranieri who he described as a 'risk-free' appointment.

As it's turned out just a few months later, the hiring was anything but 'risk-free'.

Ranieri's approach is the stark opposite of what Jokanovic had Fulham playing, going from a possession-based style to a defensive, counter-attacking brand.

(Image: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

Players were brought it to fit one style of play and they're now being shoehorned into a style they don't fit, while members of the side that were so important under Jokanovic have been pushed out altogether in favour of 'Premier League experience'.

Interestingly, Ranieri's stats suggest he has the team performing better than Jokanovic did during his spell.

He's averaging one goal a game compared to 0.9 under Jokanovic, 1.9 goals conceded compared to 2.6, while they've faced less shots (13.9 to 16.3) and allowed less shots on goal (5.7 to 6.3).

But yet the fans have turned and it's easy to see why.

There was an identity under Jokanovic, one that had been built up over the course of two and a half seasons and one that the fan bought into, but under Ranieri there isn't one.

The football has been dire and considering the team have been together for 26 Premier League games, there isn't actually much improvement when you look at those stats.

But the biggest thing under Ranieri is that the pathway from the Academy, Fulham's shining light, has been gated off.

(Image: John Walton/PA Wire)

He has no time for youth and that has been evident over his handling of Sessegnon, who after the loss to Manchester United Ranieri described as not being in his best fitness or form.

It is this treatment of a man who has embodied what Fulham has been about the past few years coupled with the dire football seen since his arrival that has meant Ranieri has already lost the fans.

He may have won the Premier League with Leicester City, but he's now showing why he got the sack the next season and why so many were surprised to see him get that job in the first place.

Khan Snr said when he appointed him: "Making a change without having the right answer or succession plan was not an option.

"So having someone of Claudio's calibre ready to accept our challenge was comforting but, most of all, essential.

"Claudio is risk-free and ready-made for the Premier League, and particularly so for what we need at this moment at Fulham."

As it's turning out, he's none of these things.

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