Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has hit back at Alan Shearer after the Match of the Day pundit slammed the sacking of Frank de Boer .
The former England striker criticised the Selhurst Park club for a lack of homework in appointing the ex-Ajax coach this summer. De Boer was fired after 77 days and losing his first four Premier League games and replaced by Roy Hodgson last week.
Parish made no reference to the Dutchman's quick-fire sacking in his programme notes before Saturday's defeat to Southampton.
But the co-owner has now broken his silence to claim he would have been “negligent” not to take decisive action after making the wrong appointment following Sam Allardyce's shock departure in May.
"Actually, it was the one we had the most time for and possibly almost agonised over it too much and it kind of became almost muddled thinking," Parish told Holmesdale Radio.
"Because we took too long we lost some options as well and it is difficult for me to talk too much about what went on in that period and the thinking and what we did do but Frank impressed me when I met him and we talked a lot about what we were and the time I felt it would take to change.
“Eight years ago I decided to take something I loved and try to make a difference to it.
I am not going to sit here now and write off the last seven years as a failure because Alan Shearer doesn't think I took enough time. Perhaps if certain people decided to get involved in creating things or making things or put themselves on the line, they would have the same kind of experiences.
“I don't think I would ever take that option of sitting their criticising other people that are taking risks and trying to do their best in that way. Obviously people are paid for opinions and controversy but at the end of the day it wasn't because we didn't think about it. It was perhaps because we thought about it too much.
“And maybe there was a bit of a disconnect about what could be achieved in the time possible. That's not about spending money. It is just a about that the leagues are being very different and maybe what Frank thought he could achieve in a shorter space of time wasn't going to happen.”
Parish told Holmesdale Radio: “Obviously results weren't good, and I can understand people saying that four games wasn't enough.
"But Frank was here from the July 1 and in the end, I didn't think it was going to work. We could have gone on longer, but if that then produced the outcomes I thought it was going to, that just kind of makes me negligent really.
"You know what you open yourself up for when you make that change, but I can't sit there thinking: 'People will say it is not long enough' or people will say: 'Didn't you think it through in the summer?' I can't let that make the decision.
"The decision has to be: 'What is the bigger picture and is this going to improve' and based on two-and-a-half months really, not just four games, I didn't think it would work and I regret that. I regret the fact that it didn't work for Frank as much as it didn't work for the football club but it didn't. I felt I had to make that change."
Hear the full interview at: http://holradio.net/