Fulham director Tony Khan has apologised to supporters following Monday's 3-0 Premier League home defeat by Aston Villa and vowed to bring in new players to boost their chances of staying up.
Fulham, who were promoted after winning the Championship playoff final against Brentford at Wembley last season, are rooted to the bottom of the table after losing their first three games and conceding 10 goals.
"I apologise to supporters for our performance. We've looked to add centre backs since Wembley, I'm sorry we haven't yet as two got COVID, we lost a free we thought was close and had another issue with a fourth centre back," Khan tweeted.
"I promise players in and better efforts from this squad ... We all need to do a better job. Everyone at the club for the past year worked really hard to get the team up and now we need to work significantly harder to stay up."
Fulham manager Scott Parker said on Tuesday that his team fought until the end and Khan should not have apologised for the display.
"It's not something I agree with but it's how he sees it. The thing I'm actually disappointed with is how he's apologising for the performance. He shouldn't have," Parker told British media.
"From 3-0 down, they (Fulham's players) were still trying to work as much as they could to try and get us back in the game and for that I don't agree with him."
Fulham were relegated from England's top flight at the end of the 2018-19 campaign despite spending 100 million pounds on players but secured an immediate return to the Premier League.
Parker's side visit fellow west London side Brentford in the League Cup fourth round on Thursday.
(Reporting by Arvind Sriram in Bengaluru and Manasi Pathak in Chennai; Editing by Peter Rutherford and Ken Ferris)
