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The making of Scott Parker: Fulham boss out to build a Premier League side in his own image
An emotional Scott Parker struggled to put it all into words when Fulham secured promotion at Wembley last month.
His post-match interview in which he tried to sum up the 24/7 life as manager by talking about “going at 100mph and losing sight of other things” went viral after it was matched with The Streets’ Dry Your Eyes in a YouTube video.
Promotion was the culmination of 18 months’ work and the interview demonstrated what it meant to a talented young manager, who will now get a crack at the big league. Parker was put in charge of a sinking ship when he was appointed at the end of the 2018-19 season, with Fulham heading for the Championship. Since then, he has picked up the pieces after a relegation campaign that featured three managers, a host of under-performing signings and left plenty of psychological scars at Craven Cottage.
He has instilled a clear philosophy of hard work and stylish football, and, just 37 days since their Play-Off Final win against Brentford, is ready to make his mark in the top flight. “He’s more confident this time,” Stuart Gray, Parker’s assistant, tells Standard Sport.
“He enjoys being shoulder-to-shoulder with the big Premier League managers who we’re going to be taking on. He’s very confident in his own ability and he’s very confident in the group of lads that we’ve got. “There aren’t many people in their first year of a job that have got promoted. He’s earned it. Our next step now is obviously kicking on.”
Parker knows Fulham have to do things differently this time. When the Cottagers were promoted two years ago, they ripped up what they had built under Slavisa Jokanovic and spent £100million on new signings.
Most underperformed, the spirit in the squad was broken and Fulham were relegated. This time, Parker has a greater say in the club’s transfer activity than his predecessors and the former Charlton, Chelsea, Tottenham, West Ham and England midfielder has shaped a side that mirror his old playing style.
“With Scott, he thought about everything,” says his former manager Alan Curbishley. “No one would have worked any harder than he did at becoming a professional footballer.”
Parker has taken that work ethic into management and he wants to see from his team, too. “It’s no coincidence that he wants players him mirror himself on the training pitch,” says Gray.
“Players that give everything for the cause, and then nobody can point a finger at you. If we get beat, we get beat on ability. We don’t get beat on application or desire or commitment, because that’s how he was as a player and that’s what he wants from his team.”
Parker’s path into management started during his time at Tottenham, when he embarked on his coaching badges. It continued at Fulham, where he earned his UEFA licence while he was still a player, and then began in earnest when he returned to Spurs as Under-18s coach in 2017.
The hours of work he has put in during that time has been building towards this point. He is the first in and last out at Fulham’s training ground. He likes to leave nothing to chance and his post-match interview at Wembley gave an insight into the painstaking preparation that many inside the game believe will help establish him alongside Frank Lampard as another talented young English manager in the Premier League.
Parker has been rewarded for the job he is doing with a three-year contract, but keeping Fulham up will not be easy. The Cottagers are among the favourites to go down and they face a tough start at home against Arsenal on Saturday. “He knows Fulham are not going to outplay teams most weeks,” says Curbishley. “He will take it in his stride, but he is going to come up against situations he has not faced before. He has had a fantastic season and you’ll be lucky if you’re going to get another season like that in the Premier League.”
The challenge, though, is one Parker will relish. “We’re playing week-in, week-out now against world-class players,” says Gray. “One mistake, boom, you will get punished. That’s what we’re trying to work on with these guys, mentality wise, that we give no free gifts away to the opposition. “We can’t give them goals — that’s what we probably did far too much in the Premier League last time round.”
