Parish defends decision to sack De Boer
Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has defended his decision to sack Frank de Boer, the Independent reports.
The Eagles’ chief made the bold decision to dismiss the Dutch manager, despite him only having managed four Premier League games during his short tenure at the club.
Based on two and a half months, I didn’t think that it would work. I regret the fact that it didn’t work for Frank as much as it didn’t work for the club and I felt we had to make a change.
Results weren’t good. We could have gone on longer, but if that produced the outcomes I thought it was going to then that makes me negligent.
Parish has come under fire in recent times for his choice to relieve De Boer of his duties, with a consensus built around the opinion that the former Ajax and Inter Milan boss deserved more time to implement his philosophy.
It’s the one we had most time for and possibly almost agonising over it too much and it became almost muddled thinking. I think because we took too long we lost some options. The leagues are very different and maybe what Frank thought he could achieve in a short space of time wasn’t going to happen.
However, with the Eagles in concerning form early on, De Boer was swiftly ousted out and replaced by Roy Hodgson, who had been out of work since resigning from the England national team at the end of June.
Hodgson took charge of his first game on Saturday afternoon, as Palace welcomed Southampton to Selhurst Park. However, the Eagles couldn’t prevent Saints coming away with a relatively comfortable 1-0 win.
If you look at the second half against Ipswich we went to 4-3-3 and then at Burnley we went to 4-3-3, clearly with the people we had that seemed to be the best way we can play and Frank was perfectly capable of coaching a team to play that way.
But I think by that time we were in a bit of a cycle and I just felt we needed to make a change.