“Absolute fake news” – Manager makes stance clear on Crystal Palace reports, unimpressed with claims

Altach manager Klaus Schmidt has insisted that claims he would be joining Adi Hütter at Crystal Palace were “absolute fake news”.

The Austrian manager has been speaking to Sky Sports Austria in his homeland about his managerial career so far and his current relegation battle with Rheindorf Altach.

During that conversation the subject of a move to England was brough up, after recent rumours had seen him linked with a future move to Crystal Palace.

A report in Austria earlier this month claimed that they were on the verge of appointing Adi Hütter as their new manager and, part of that report stated he had already settled on his assistants for the role, with Schmidt said to be one of them.

Those claims were quickly dismissed in England, where Crystal Palace chief Steve Parish insisted, he had never even spoken to Hütter about the manager’s role.

He made it clear that the Austrian coach was not in the running at that point, essentially labelling the reports false, and Schmidt backs that up, admitting that the part involving him at least was wide of the mark.

“That takes an extreme amount of substance to justify,” he said.

“I had 30 congratulations on WhatsApp. Everyone was wondering what I was doing in the Premier League, and it was absolutely fake news.”