As a loving father, Scott Parker shakes his head humorously while he is approaching a meeting of his Burnley players in the canteen in their training area of Gawthorpe Hall.
The team closes their own game from Clarets traitors, based on the TV series, and the gossip is hard with how Ashley Barnes and Joe Worrall have fooled everyone to win.
'Hours of discussion', Parker calls on while he overflows, beautifully in Gray Knitwear, to become a member of the Chit-Chat.
The game was the idea of striker Zian Flemming and it generated team binding for two months with daily voices after training and players' photos on the wall of the change in change in the change of change in change after each elimination.
Parker is very happy how his group was learned after a hectic summer in which more than 30 players came and go after relegation, in addition to his own appointment to succeed Vincent Kompany.
“I don't think I'm so tight,” he reflects. That is an impressive claim when Parker played for six Premier League clubs and Fulham and Bournemouth managed to promote.
Burnley is in the mix to give him a hat trick and to be in third place in the championship prior to Friday's game against Sheffield Wednesday but that only tells half of the story.
Their defensive record has become a national conversation point with 11 consecutive clean sheets and only nine goals have admitted throughout the season, although 11 goalless draws also explain why they follow Leeds and Sheffield United in the table.
Parker is proud of the refusal of his team to admit, but it insists that it is not priority above scoring.
“The goal is promotion – not to set defensive records,” he says Mail Sport firmly. 'Yes, our ambition is to be a rock, but also to be an attacking force.
'There is a story that I am a defensive coach, but I still want my entire backs to bomb and commit bodies. I just need them to run the other way just as quickly to protect our goal!
'We worked on the defensive side early because the group was new and we had to record core values; Cover, distances, team structure. Over the past three months we have been working 80 percent of the time on the attack phase. 'Parker jokes he has not received any text from former boss Jose Mourinho whose Chelsea team has the record for the admitted goals; 15 in 2004-05.
Both managers have benefited from their keepers. Mourinho had Petr Cech, while Parker's No 1 James Trafford will match a championship record if he holds his 24th closure on Friday evening.
“Last season was difficult for trade in losing his place and relegation,” explains Parker. “It would leave anyone a dent. My job was to rebuild him.
'Fortunately this is a young man with an incredible belief to clean things up. That's why I see him as a goalkeeper in England. Our back line is really young. CJ Egan-Vriley, had never played senior football before. Bashir Humphreys came from Chelsea on loan in Swansea after six months. Lucas Pires did not speak a word of English when he signed.
'The entire team has contributed. The players will tell you that I show clips from the middle ahead that protects the middle or wing players and makes recovery runs. Everyone must be involved. '
Parker The player won 18 English caps and was named football player of the year in 2011. He was a pity that his career coincided with the golden generation. Even his time in Chelsea was demolished. “I competed with world -class players such as Frank Lampard and Claude Makelele who were better than me,” he acknowledges.
As a manager, the 44-year-old highlights and lows has experienced. He was fired by Bournemouth four games in the season in 2022 after appealing to signing sessions after a 9-0 defeat in Liverpool.
His enchantment at Club Brugge was over before it started when Benfica beat them out of the Champions League.
“It sounds light, but it is a cold, difficult fact that you will learn more about yourself during difficult times,” he assesses. 'Standing on that touchline on Anfield was a great place.
'That raw emotion was still there when the camera pointed to me five minutes after the game. Maybe I should have kept my breath, but I don't think I have exceeded the border by saying that the players needed help.
“I worked tirelessly for Bournemouth. They were in the championship in their second season and the statistics show that only 10 percent of those teams are promoted, but we were. Bruges was difficult because I came to the middle season and had to process things so quickly. I signed a three -year contract and after 10 weeks it was over.
“I was sad about the way it ended, more for my family. I have a boy of 10, we took him out of school and we all went there. Suddenly you go back and you have to find another school.
“You are poking, you take an eight-count and you come up again.”
Parker was the first of 10 candidates who were interviewed for the Burnleybaan last summer. He clearly left an impression because after they had met the others, Van Nistelrooy, Liam Rosenior and Craig Bellamy, they turned to the smartest manager in the country.
At one point Burnley will admit again for the first time since December 21. Parker promises that it will derail the big whole, the promotion. “One thing about this group, they always respond in the right way,” he says.
Everything else would be insidious.
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