Jose Mourinho claims Fulham should apologise if they play strong team against Tottenham

Jose Mourinho has claimed Fulham will owe the rest of the Premier League an apology if Scott Parker's side field a strong team to face Tottenham on Wednesday.

Parker himself described the decision to rearrange the originally postponed fixture for midweek as 'scandalous', having put out a strong XI for the FA Cup victory over Queens Park Rangers at the weekend.

Aston Villa were intended to be Spurs' opponents on Wednesday but a Covid-19 outbreak in their squad has seen them pull out.

Speaking in his pre match press conference on Tuesday, Mourinho guarded against sympathy for the west London side and urged the rest of the teams in the division to continue playing.

He said: "They played Saturday against QPR in London. They have Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to prepare for the game tomorrow [Wednesday]. If they come with half of the team I will be the first one to apologise to them, and I will be the first one to say we played this game with an advantage.

"If they come with their best team I think they should apologise to all of us. Come on, let's play football, let's behave the best we can, let's protect our industry, our image, and let's play football."

"We should see their team, their starting lineup, their bench, the players that are not involved."

The game between Tottenham and Fulham was originally slated for late December but was pushed back due to the Cottagers' coronavirus outbreak.

"After that, we can all feel sorry for them or we can all think that they shouldn't speak," Mourinho added. "My feeling is that they will play with everybody, maybe one player out, maximum two, that's just my guess. Of course we don't have access to any of this information, it's just a feeling I have, the best Fulham will be here.

"When we see the best Fulham then you realise lots of things that don't make sense."

Tottenham are seven points behind current Premier League leaders Manchester United but can cut that gap to one with victories over Fulham and Sheffield United before the Red Devils face Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday.

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