It is a worrying time for Palace.. but don’t just lay the blame at the manager’s door

IT’S an absolute nonsense if Frank de Boer is on the brink of the sack at Crystal Palace after just three games.

Obviously, Palace did their homework on him properly, so they will have known what kind of football he wanted to play.

But it would not be a great advertisement for the Premier League, if a man who has managed Ajax and Inter Milan, and was Holland’s assistant coach when they reached the World Cup final in 2010, was binned after just four matches.

Look, I’m a big fan of what Palace have done over the last five years and I like chairman Steve Parish. He chose his managers well when he appointed Tony Pulis, Alan Pardew and Sam Allardyce.

They were all a good fit for the players at their disposal and all kept Palace clear of relegation trouble. So what on earth happened to pragmatic recruitment in the summer?

Premier League clubs don’t appoint head coaches by drawing names out of a hat, so when Palace did their due diligence on De Boer, and studied how his teams had played in the past, what did they think they were getting?

Yes, it’s worrying the Eagles have lost their first three games, especially as two of them were at home to Huddersfield and Swansea, whose priority is likely to be survival. And, yes, the performances have been disjointed.

But if you look at the players De Boer inherited, there was a clear pattern based around Christian Benteke as a targetman at centre-forward.

Surely you have to accept a transformation of playing style is not going to happen overnight and you take a long-term approach – don’t you?

But there are strong suggestions that De Boer will be fired if Palace lose at Burnley tomorrow – and that’s a travesty, even if they have never lost the first four games of the season in their history.

Don’t just lay the blame at the manager’s door. You also have to look at the people who identified him as the right man for the job.

De Boer (right) is in an impossible position because he has to decide whether to abandon his philosophy, and adapt to the players he has to choose from, or stick to his principles knowing that could lead to the sack.

The players need to look at themselves. On paper, there is enough quality for Palace to finish in the top 10 – Benteke (left), Andros Townsend, Yohan Cabaye and Wilf Zaha, who has admittedly been injured.

And if the axe falls, who are Palace going to turn up next? There is only a limited supply of survival specialists who will put pragmatism before style, but Parish has already seen many of them come and go.

Ironically, one manager who would be a good fit for Palace is going to be in the opposition dugout tomorrow – Sean Dyche. But who’s going to dive into the Palace job now, knowing you could be staring down the barrel after just three games?

When the transfer window shuts on buying players at the end of August, the same should apply to clubs hiring and firing managers.

There should be a ceasefire in the so-called sack race – so the directors who appoint managers are held to account, and new coaches such as De Boer are given a minimum of 20 games to show what they can do.