LONDON (AP) — Fulham manager Scott Parker has criticized the club’s American owner for going on social media to apologize for the team’s display in its third straight loss to open the Premier League season.
Minutes after the final whistle of Fulham’s 3-0 loss to Aston Villa on Monday, Tony Khan wrote in successive tweets that he was sorry about the performance of Parker’s team and promised “better efforts” in future games.
“People have the platform. You own a football club, you can decide how you want to communicate or send a message out,” Parker said. “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.
“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.”
Fulham is in last place after three games of its first season back in the top division, having also lost 3-0 to Arsenal on the opening weekend and then 4-3 at Leeds.
Fulham has already conceded 10 goals — the club let in a league-high 81 when getting relegated in the 2018-19 season — and Khan went into detail in his tweets about the failed attempts to sign more center backs during the transfer window.
While he said the players need to work “significantly harder to stay up,” Parker chose to rally around them.
“At 3-0 down, they were still trying to work as much as they can to try and get us back in the game and for that I don’t agree with him (Khan),” Parker said.
“I’ll be the first to have an issue with my squad and my team and my players if I felt that that was something which needed to be criticized. So I have an issue with that and obviously that’s something which I don’t agree with.”
Fulham next plays on Thursday in the fourth round of the English League Cup against Brentford in a repeat of last season’s Championship playoff final.
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