Crystal Palace

Alan Pardew: 'Loyalty to players cost me Crystal Palace job'

By Daniel Lewis, Senior Reporter | 29 March 2017

Former Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew claims that the Eagles "should have done more" to strengthen during his last summer in charge of the club.

Alan Pardew has put his Crystal Palace sacking down to showing 'too much loyalty' to his group of players and failing to adequately strengthen last summer.

The 55-year-old was given his marching orders shortly before Christmas following a dismal run of form, seeing his side win one of their previous 11 games to drop down to 17th place in the Premier League at the time.

Pardew offloaded Yannick Bolasie and used the funds to bring in the likes of Christian Benteke, James Tomkins and Andros Townsend, spending in excess of £50m in the process, but he feels that not enough was done to strengthen the group on the back of 2015-16's run to the FA Cup final.

"Looking back, I sat down with Steve [Parish] in the summer and we decided we wanted to take the club forward," he told The Times. "We made changes but I definitely have the view we didn't change the squad enough. We brought players in but I think we should have done more.

"That was compounded when we thought we had good cover at left back, not thinking Pape Souare would be in a car crash. That was a big mistake not getting cover in one or two areas. Sometimes as manager you do get loyal to players. They kept us up, we got to the cup final. I couldn't fault their attitude but we didn't have a balanced team.

"The players I've had, I think I've largely got the maximum out of them but maybe you can't keep going for maximum. Maybe my loyalty gets in the way a little bit. I have been loyal to a fault with some. That's just a trait I have. Something I have to keep an eye on."

Palace have recovered from a slow start under new boss Sam Allardyce by winning three games in succession prior to the international break.