Crystal Palace failed to give manager Frank de Boer the time to turn things around at the club, despite promising him as much initially.
That’s according to his brother, who says the Eagles panicked and did not back the Dutch coach as they should have back in 2017.
De Boer was announced as Sam Allardyce’s replacement at Crystal Palace back in June 2017, signing a three-year deal with the South London club at the time.
However, he was sacked just ten weeks into his reign at the club when Crystal Palace lost their first four league games of the season without scoring a single goal.
They became the first team in 93 years to begin a league campaign in that manner and he was quickly sacked, despite only managing them for a total of 450 minutes of game time. That was the shortest reign of any manager in the Premier League era in terms of number of matches.
His only win at the club came in the EFL Cup against Ipswich, with his attempts to implement a possession-based style falling flat.
He did not appear to have the players to play that type of football and that quickly became apparent, but his brother insists it was actually just a case of not being given enough time.
“They wanted to play attacking football and put pressure on,” he said.
“Then during the contract talks they say: that’s what we want, you get the time. Then you lose three, four games, they panic and then they have to get points very quickly.”