Fulham's director of football Tony Khan has taken to Twitter to apologise for their performance against Aston Villa, and claims two potential defensive deals have been lost due to coronavirus.
The Cottagers were abject as Villa ran out 3-0 winners at Craven Cottage, with Fulham's back line desperately struggling to cope.
Only this week Scott Parker has seen his latest target - Marlon Santos - fail a medical ahead of his move from Sassuolo as the west Londoners look to add another defender before next week's deadline.
And Khan has claimed they have now missed out on four defenders since winning promotion through the play-off final at Wembley in August.
"I apologise to Fulham's supporters for our performance tonight," Khan said.
"We’ve looked to add centre-backs since Wembley, I’m sorry we haven’t yet as two got COVID and we lost a Free we thought was close and had another issue with a fourth centre-back.
"I promise players in and better efforts from this squad.
"I should and will apologise repeatedly for that performance. I’m sorry everybody. We all need to do a better job.
"Everyone at the club for the past year worked really hard to get the team up, & now we need to work significantly harder to stay up. I promise better efforts than today."
