PARKER ON CHELSEA SPELL
The Fulham manager has been reflecting on his mixed 18-month period at Stamford Bridge as a player.
He told Sky Sports: “There is some disappointment there. At that moment, I was probably a bit young in who I was as a player and my development and as a person really.
“Going to such a huge club at that moment didn’t give me the best chances to get into that team and be a regular.
“Then on the flip side of that, there are some real positives – surrounding myself in an environment that was world class, surrounding myself with world-class players that educated me.
“I came from Charlton, and no disrespect to them, but I was there from the age of nine and going to Chelsea when I was 21 or 22, I had never experienced or seen world-class players or people in that sense.
“Like I said, that’s no disrespect and I don’t want it to sound like that, but that was something which helped me, made me grow and gave me a reference point of what it needed to look like and what I needed to do. So a mixed bag really.”