Fulham manager Scott Parker will not be apologising to Tottenham boss, Jose Mourinho, following a 1-1 draw on Wednesday night.
In the build-up to the rearranged London derby, Mourinho said Fulham should apologise if they fielded a strong side.
This was due to Parker and Fulham’s unhappiness at the hastily rearranged fixture.
Parker would go onto field a strong side, making just one change from Fulham’s previous Premier League fixture.
Parker commented: “I owe no-one an apology, this football club owes no-one an apology.
“You can talk from outside and people can see what they want to see and work out exactly what the script is but it was far from that. There were two players on the pitch that had only trained for one day, they’d come back from Covid-19 and played in that game.”
The Fulham boss continued: “I had players on the pitch with just three or four days of training. The issue for me regarding this fixture is having just two days to prepare for it. I understand that.
“The issue was 16 days ago this game was scheduled in but since then we’ve had 10 positive cases, including a couple of staff and then on Monday morning we got told we had to play this game. That was my issue. People understood the predicament we were in – we wasn’t making it up. We’ve been very open, in terms of the safety of others too.
“This team came with a purpose and two days of hard work. In the end, we go away with a pleasing result.”
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The 1-1 draw is a fantastic result for Fulham, who sit two points away from safety in the Premier league. Mourinho however, will be ruing missed chances from his Tottenham side.
Mourinho said: “Look, I truly believe, I have to believe and I know the top hierarchy at Fulham Football Club and we’re dealing with honest people and of course they had problems. Of course, the reason why we didn’t play the game when we should, there were reasons for that. Let’s put that very, very, very clear.
“The reason why they were not happy to play today is different, questions you have to ask Scott not me. But in the Football world, it’s very difficult to keep secrets.”
The Spurs manager continued: “Somebody tells somebody who tells somebody who tells somebody and it arrives to somebody else. And of course we knew for a dew days that they were ready and had the players to come.
“Mitrovic is not a Covid situation, [he] had a small injury from the last match. We knew that so it’s something you have to ask Scott. But make things very, very clear. Of course, they had problems and of course, there was a reason for them not to play the game a couple of weeks ago.”
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