Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Parish is a vain City Suit who should be reminded his role is to sign the cheques
WHEN the new Crystal Palace manager claimed in June he would have them playing like the finest Ajax sides, I doubt I was the only person to write that they could be sending for Sam Allardyce by Christmas.
But Christmas came early for Big Sam on Monday when the Palace chairman rang to ask “for his thoughts” after sacking Frank De Boer, only for Allardyce to tell Steve Parish he wasn’t in them right now.
The job instead went to Roy Hodgson, whose final words in the last managerial position he held were the fabulously apt “I don’t know what I’m doing here”.
A phrase Parish should blow up, frame and nail to his office wall to remind him of his role in the farcically brief tenure of the four-times Eredivisie-winning coach at Selhurst Park.
Because hiring De Boer wasn’t Parish’s first unsuccessful stab at bringing Total Football to Croydon, as this story in a London newspaper the previous summer showed: “Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew has promised a new brand of football this season with a slant towards the tiki-taka style pioneered by Barcelona.”
Parish had watched Swansea and Southampton hire managers who played their way into the hearts of footballing purists and wanted to be viewed in the same light, so ordered Pardew to play “a more expansive style”.
Four months later Pardew was gone and Allardyce was brought in to cut out the fancy-dan nonsense and keep them up.
Which he did.
So you’d have thought Parish would have been chastened by his failed attempt to drive the tactics truck, remembered he’s an advertising exec who got rich, and left the playing side to a football man who could build on Palace’s progress under Allardyce.
It didn’t happen. Parish still fancied himself as a forward-thinking football sophisticate so pushed for De Boer against the wishes of his American joint-owners, and when the Dutchman accepted, was brimming with self-praise for his “amazing milestone” appointment.
At De Boer’s unveiling he said: “We’ve spoken a lot about evolution so we need a different way of playing,” before reeling off a string of examples about diamonds, three-at-theback, and breaking down teams that “give us the ball”.
Is there a more cringeworthy sight than a vain City Suit who thinks because he was successful at making money he can inject his genius into the playing side of a football club (apart from the ones who swap their suit for a tracksuit bearing their initials and swan around the training ground fist-bumping players)?
Once Parish appointed De Boer he should have helped bring in players quickly (as opposed to Mamadou
Chairmen interfere with team tactics at their peril
Sakho at the last minute), assured everyone that turning an Allardyce-coached side into Barca II would take time, and appreciated that had star players converted golden chances in Palace’s away games they could now be on four points with no need to panic by reverting to a defensiveminded coach.
Surely the briefest of Google searches (or simpy typing in the name Michael Knighton) would have shown that chairmen interfere with their team’s tactics at their peril.
Bill Shankly’s best quotes have endured because at the core of them was a truth that transcends fashion. Quotes like: “At a football club, there’s a holy trinity: the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques.”
Maybe when Parish has nailed up the “I don’t know what I’m doing here” sign, he could put that Shanklyism next to it. To remind him what he should be doing.