Fulham manager Martin Jol has hit back at Bobby Zamora, after the latter recently claimed the vast majority of the London club's players did not like the manager.
Zamora was sold to Queens Park Rangers in January after reportedly falling out with the Dutch manager. The striker last week suggested Jol was a difficult man to work with, while adding several other Fulham players also had problems with the manager.
"It is probably sour grapes," Jol told reporters. "I think nothing is what it seems. Everyone knows me. The players know me so one player will say this, another player will say that.
"It doesn't matter. I don't care. For me, the most important thing is we get the results so you will have to ask the players.
"If they do well and work hard, I try to get a good relationship with them. If not, I don't. Insiders here know that this probably started after two weeks of me being here.
"There was a few leaks in the paper and I asked him and he said 'no, it wasn't me'. I knew it was him and his agent 100 percent.
"He said 'no, it wasn't me, I hate the press'. He hated defense and later said he hated crosses as well and that was the moment I thought 'maybe it is better to sell' and that is what we did."
After Zamora, Fulham saw several key departures this summer with Mousa Dembele, Clint Dempsey, Danny Murphy, Andrew Johnson and Dickson Etuhu also leaving the club. However, Jol insisted he had no problems with any of the mentions players.
"If you take Clint Dempsey, it is different from Mousa Dembele," he said. "Mousa was phoning me after his move and thanking me for everything. Every player is different.
"Clint wanted to move so then the relationship would not be great. Danny Murphy I wanted to keep so ask him. There were no issues at all.
"With Bobby it started after a couple of weeks. Everybody knew and now he has moved on. I don't think it is typically English to make comments after a year or eight months.
"We moved on and it was not easy because I had to get another number nine. We did because (Pavel) Pogrebnyak scored as many goals in a couple of weeks as my other strikers did in six months.
"Later we got (Dimitar) Berbatov, who was probably our best signing ever, so people who know us, know Fulham and know me, knew it was quite a challenge here. In hindsight, you could say we managed to do well."
Meanwhile, Jonas Olsson signed a new four-year contract with West Brom, the club confirmed. "This is great news for the club and shows we're heading in the right direction," manager Steve Clarke said.
"We've had a productive summer in terms of bringing new players in but it's equally important that you hold onto your best players, and Jonas certainly fits into that category."
