Billy Sharp claimed that Wrexham conducted themselves with a lack of respect following their FA Cup fourth round tie on Tuesday night, with the National League side now hitting back at the claims.
Sharp scored in injury time to hand the Championship club a lead which they extended in the final minute to run out 3-1 winners. Before the goal, the match had appeared set for injury time with Paul Mullin having equalised with a penalty in the second half before a second spot kick was saved by Adam Davies.
After the match, Sharp voiced his criticism of Wrexham players, saying that the club had shown 'disrespect' in their conduct before and after the match. The veteran forward was speaking to ITV after the match and the video of him making the comments has been viewed over 2.9 million times.
READ MORE: Erik ten Hag makes Marcel Sabitzer prediction
However, the claims have since been rebuffed, with both Wrexham's manager Phil Parkinson and captain Ben Tozer saying that Sharp was guilty of disrespect himself. After the match, Parkinson, who guided a Bradford to the 2013 League Cup final, spoke out against the claims.
He said: “I was a bit disappointed with Billy, with some of the things he was shouting down the tunnel. He’s a fantastic player but I thought he was disrespectful after the game.
“The way their players celebrated was a mark of how tough we made it for them. My message to Billy is: you’re better than that. My players are humble people and they’re a credit to the football club.”
The Welsh side's skipper Tozer, added that the claims were fabricated, he said: “I feel like a bit of a dampener has been put on the game with the way they’ve acted in the tunnel. They showed a real lack of humility,
“But that’s the way they want to be and I feel like if we won that game we would’ve shown a lot more humility and respect. They should show more respect to us. They were telling us to ‘shove it on the documentary’.
“I feel like he’s [Sharp] fabricated stuff in his head to make that acceptable for himself if I’m honest. I said to him face-to-face, ‘show a bit more humility’. We’ve congratulated them on the win, we haven’t sulked, we’ve walked down the tunnel as normal and it’s just a shame that that’s the way it’s ended.”
READ NEXT:
