The manager of Fulham, Scott Parker has insisted that he owes the manager of Tottenham Hotspur no apology after he was able to get a point at Tottenham Stadium on Wednesday.
Fulham were initially scheduled to play their Premier League match against Tottenham Hotspur on December 30 but had to be postponed because Fulham reported a high number of coronavirus cases.
A few days after, they were in action against other clubs which made Jose Mourinho suspect that the situation at Fulham was not as serious as they made it looked.
Hence, when the fixture was rescheduled for Wednesday, January 13, Mourinho told the press that if Fulham present a strong squad against Tottenham in the match, the club should apologize to the world.
After the Premier League match which ended 1-1 to the dismay of Jose Mourinho and his boys who were aiming to garner more points in their battle for the league title, Scott Parker made it clear that he owes no one an apology for presenting a strong squad against Tottenham.
Contrary to the belief of Jose Mourinho, Parker insisted that most of his players contracted the dreaded coronavirus and found it difficult to prepare for the Tottenham vs Fulham rescheduled match despite being able to draw away from home.
“I owe no one an apology, this football club owes no one an apology,” Scott Parker said.
“You can talk from the 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 that pitch that had only trained for one day, they’d come back from Covid-19 and played in that game. I had players on the pitch that had just three or four days of training. The issue for me regarding this fixture wasn’t 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 weren’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.”
A strong night’s work.
— Fulham Football Club (@FulhamFC) January 13, 2021
It’s another good point for the cause. 👊#TOTFUL
In his reaction after the 1-1 draw with Fulham, Jose Mourinho insisted that he expected Scott Parker to use his best players despite complaining that most of his players did not have enough time to prepare for the game due to coronavirus outbreak at the club.
He, however, noted that he believes that Fulham had high cases of the virus as they claimed because he knows some trustworthy people among the hierarchy of the club.
Despite agreeing that Fulham had coronavirus issues in their squad, the Tottenham coach insisted that Fulham were ready early enough to play Tottenham on Wednesday even though Scott Parker claimed otherwise.
“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”, said Mourinho. “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 a different, questions you have to ask Scott not me. But in the football world, it’s very difficult to keep secrets.
“Somebody tells somebody who tells somebody who tells somebody and it arrives at somebody else. And of course, we knew for a few 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.”
Jose’s verdict on tonight’s match. #THFC ⚪️ #COYS pic.twitter.com/nM6PL8EaaO
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) January 13, 2021
