Scott Parker savaged his Fulham side after they crashed out of the FA Cup at the hands of Burnley this afternoon – saying the Whites fell well short of the standards he expects.
The Fulham manager made eight changes from the team that were narrowly beaten by Manchester United in midweek but none of the newcomers pressed a claim to start this week’s crunch games at Brighton and West Brom. Burnley were in complete control from the off and booked a fifth round tie against either Bournemouth or Crawley courtesy of a brace from Jay Rodriguez’s and Kevin Long’s late third.
Parker was bitterly disappointed with Fulham’s tame showing, telling his post-match press conference:
“We didn’t deserve a result today. It was a tough game and we couldn’t match what we had to face today, we couldn’t deal with them. We fell very short of the standards we’re used to seeing. We all understood the challenges and we couldn’t deal with it too well and get a foothold in the game. Burnley were well worthy of the win.”
The Fulham boss was similarly pessimistic about the potential for new arrivals before the closure of the January transfer window, saying ‘I’m not sure that’s going to happen’. Pressed on potential outgoings, Parker admitted some fringe players may leave the club with Stefan Johansen’s rumoured departure for QPR on loan ‘a possibility’.
Just shows the paucity of quality in our squad.
Remember that Parker and Khan felt these players were good enough to start the Premiership season off.
What was even more disappointing was the seemingly lack of genuine effort by so many.
And so much for Parker giving youth a chance
And, now, after a couple of rumours re a potential striker being signed, Parker crushes all of our hopes by stating that it’s unlikely we will sign anybody before the transfer deadline.
How can this possibly, in our worst nightmare, be true?
Our defence was back to appalling like the beginning of the seasons. Hector and Ream are not premiership players.Mitro and Kamara did little to stake their claim in preference to Cav. I would have like to see Kebano given more game time today. It just proves how thin our squad really is. A very disappointing afternoon. and to make it worse a large number of our players lacked any passion.
Agreed today was really poor. BUT….
To be fair, Scott Parker made it clear that he had wanted better defenders to start the season when he expressed frustration with TK, and the season being so many games in before our better players arrived, in his comments about this January window.
He spoke positively about his squad of players at the start of the season because he had to. Man management does not involve telling your only options that they are not fit for purpose.
S.P. is not in control of T.K. My belief is that he is professionally tactful in his utterings to camera.
I do not blame Scotty at all. Wednesday match is much important so his hands were tied. As soon as I saw the team with Ream and Hector at the centre of defence I guessed we would concede 3 or 4 goals. They cannot play in the same team and Hector especially was awful. We would have been better playing with a back four and leaving one of them out. Mitro looked sluggish but he did not get a great deal of service. Perhaps they should have played Kebano who can cross the ball. Need to forget todays abysmal performance and concentrate on Wednesday when we will have the “A” team out. I just wonder who he is going to choose as the central striker or will he use the false number 9!!
That was as poor as it gets. Totally agree with all the comments.
Mitro and AK looked sluggish. Neither made a strong case to replace Cav but Mitro has potential. He has had so little game time the decision to say he should be left out because he is out of form is a self fulfilling prophecy now.
To be honest I’m more worried about next season. Our better players this season Lookman, Andersen, Anguissa etc will all be off if we go down. We’ve done nothing to encourage Mitro or Cairney to hang around or Parker for that matter. We’ll be left with a poor Championship side on the basis of yesterday.
Hard to understate the importance of our next 2 games to the club.
Totally agree with comments Why AK is being used before Kebano, we new how Burnley were going to play,there was no commitment,passion,attitude as if they did not want to be there,not up for the fight which is very worrying so now we know Lookman Areola and Andersen have been showing more passion than signed on players but they won’t stay after yesterday’s shameful performance