Fulham did not play well in their 3-0 defeat at home against Aston Villa and they’ve now lost all three of their Premier League games since being promoted.
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Add to that the fact they’ve conceded 10 goals and Scott Parker has a big job on his hands to keep Fulham in the Premier League.
It’s safe to say the Fulham manager also didn’t appreciate the son of owner Shahid Khan apologizing to fans for the performance on social media, as he also repeated that he’s been pushing to sign new defenders for several weeks.
Tony Khan — who is the co-owner, vice chairman and director of football operations at Fulham — detailed their search for a new center back, responded to fans comments on Twitter and said the display against Villa wasn’t good enough.
“I apologize to Fulham FC supporters for our performance tonight. We’ve looked to add centre-backs since Wembley, I’m sorry we haven’t yet as two got COVID and we lost a free we thought was close and had another issue with a fourth CB. I promise players in and better efforts from this squad,” Khan said in a Tweet after full time. “I should and will apologize repeatedly for that performance. I’m sorry everybody. We all need to do a better job. Everyone at the club for the past year worked really hard to get the team up and now we need to work significantly harder to stay up. I promise better efforts than today.”
Safe to say that Parker didn’t appreciate that statement as he spoke to the media ahead of Fulham’s League Cup last 16 game against Brentford.
“I think obviously I said it last night. People have the platform. You own a football club, you can decide how you want to communicate or send a message out. It’s not something I agree with, it’s not helpful from that sense but like I said that’s down to the owner and how he sees it,” Parker said. “There’s one thing that I’m disappointed with and that’s how he’s actually apologizing for the performance and that is something that I don’t agree with and he shouldn’t have. The performance last night was a good performance which was a group of players who have done everything they can, worked tirelessly from the first minute to the 95th. From 3-0 down they were still trying work as much as they can to try and get us back in the game and for that I don’t agree with him.”
This is a double-edged sword.
Many fans will appreciated Khan for responding to complaints publicly and being open and transparent. On the other hand, players and coaching staff at Fulham will probably be slightly bemused that this level of information was shared in a public forum.
Khan, who oversees the day-to-day running of Fulham, has taken a very different approach to transfers than when Fulham were promoted two seasons ago and spent big and were instantly relegated from the Premier League during the 2018-19 season.
It will be intriguing to see if Fulham splash the cash in a big way to back Parker in the final days of the window because their defensive performances suggest they will be relegated straight back to the Championship. It is early days in the Premier League season but Fulham are already having a bit of a meltdown.
