Dimitar Berbatov has joked that Claudio Ranieri faces as tough a task keeping Fulham in the Premier League as he did when guiding Leicester City to a shock title.

Fulham sacked Slavisa Jokanovic and announced Ranieri as his replacement on Wednesday morning, bringing the latter back to English football since his sacking by the Foxes.

Ranieri famously guided Leicester to the Premier League title, one year after the club narrowly avoided relegation under Nigel Pearson, with pre-season odds of 5,000/1.

Berbatov, a former Fulham striker who worked under Ranieri at Monaco, feels his ex-manager faces a similarly tall order to keep his new team in the division.

"As I said, it's going to be a challenge but it's not impossible to get them out of the relegation zone," he told Betfair.

"He'll come with a strategy to keep them up. It helps that he has a good reputation; everybody loved him at Monaco, at Leicester and I'm sure Fulham will be the same but they need to start winning games now.

"The market for Leicester winning the Premier League was 5000/1, and now the odds on Fulham staying up are probably as high as that!

"It's like the same situation in reverse; the odds are against them, it's a challenging situation, but there's a lot of games left to change it.

"He's done it with Leicester to win the title and now he can save Fulham from relegation which is probably a more difficult task to achieve.

"Fulham deserve to be in the Premier League, they're a great club with great traditions and I think Ranieri can do it, all they need is one win."