Steve Parish: It would have been 'negligent' to not sack Frank de Boer

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Steve Parish has revealed it would have been “negligent” to not sack Frank de Boer as he opened up on his decision to part company with the Dutchman after just four Premier League matches.

De Boer was in charge for 77 days before being sacked after Palace had failed to win or score in the league during his short-lived tenure.

The Eagles, who are rooted to the bottom of the table, replaced the Dutchman with Roy Hodgson who lost his first game 1-0 against Southampton, making Palace the only top-flight team in history to lose their first five games and not score.

Parish, who has appointed nine new managers during his seven-year spell as co-owner, told Holmesdale Radio that he failed to see De Boer turning things around at Selhurst Park.

“Based on two and a half months, I didn’t think that it would work,” said Parish. “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.”

‘A disgrace’ and ‘an absolute joke’ are some of the accusations levelled at Parish and the American co-owners, Joshua Harris and David Blitzer, who flew over to watch Palace’s 1-0 defeat against Burnley before sacking the manager.

Reacting to De Boer’s departure on Match of the Day, Alan Shearer believes the board failed to do their research before hiring the former Ajax and Inter Milan manager.

“It smacks of the owner or the chairman not doing any homework whatsoever before they appointed him,” he said. “I think it was a panic appointment and I think it was a panic sacking. To give someone four games is incredible.”

Parish hit back at the former England striker and admits he may have taken too much time to appoint De Boer who replaced Sam Allardyce after he stepped down as manager at the end of last season.

“I’m not going to write off the last seven years as a failure because Alan Shearer thinks I didn’t take enough time,” said the Crystal Palace chairman. “Perhaps if certain people decide to get involved with creating things or putting themselves on the line they would have the same sorts of experience.

“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,” Parish confessed to the fan-run radio show. “The leagues are very different and maybe what Frank thought he could achieve in a short space of time wasn’t going to happen.

“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.”