CRYSTAL PALACE MIDFIELDER Lee Chung-Yong has blamed Alan Pardew for the Eagles’ disappointing second half of the season in a remarkable series of criticisms of his manager.
Palace have won only one league game in 2016 and Lee’s lack of first-team football this year has persuaded him to seek a move away from Selhurst Park in the summer.
The South Korea international hit out at Pardew’s reluctance to rotate his starting XI and claimed he once had to remind the coach how many substitutes he had used during a match.
“Pardew is very smart in training but he’s too hot tempered in matches, so he even forgets how many substitutes are left!” Lee told Sports Seoul. “He told me to warm up, then we used all three substitutes, so I sat on the bench again. Five minutes later, he told me to warm up again so I told him there was no substitutes left. He just said: ‘Oh, sorry.’
“Pardew runs the team with very short-term vision. We have a great squad but he plays the same players again and again until someone gets injured. Then his replacement cannot play well because he is playing for the first time in two months. I think that’s why we have not done well in the latter half of season.
“I have a contract with Crystal Palace until 2018 but I don’t have any reason to stay here next season. I think I should try to talk to other clubs. If I had enough opportunities and had disappointed here, I would not make any excuses. But I never had opportunities.”
Lee explained that he had been won over by Pardew when Palace signed him from Bolton Wanderers in February 2015 but described his 2015-16 campaign as “humiliating”.
“I’m not playing much, any player would be worried if he does not play,” he added. “I thought I could play more here but I’m getting all the humiliation I could get through my whole career in this season.
“Pardew said he had wanted to sign me at Newcastle as well. It seemed that he really wanted to sign me so I decided to join Crystal Palace. But I got injured in January and returned in April.
“During that time, Crystal Palace did really well with [Jason] Puncheon, [Yannick] Bolasie and [Wilfried] Zaha. So my place was gone. I knew that I could not play much early on this season but the situation now is much more humiliating that I thought.
“Pardew made me train as a starter for the whole week and decided to leave me out on matchday as an injured player who had not trained all week. That was absurd. I think I did well last winter when I played three games in a row against Bournemouth, Stoke and Swansea. When Pardew substituted me out, even the fans booed. I feel it’s unfair that a player in form does not get a chance to play.”
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What a mess.
That’s an old Southern star article they are quoting. @42.ie crew -lads if ye have got this wrong then ye will lose a lot of cred. This is an important matter and i hope ye checked yer facts before publishing, especially you Fintan. He’s being appointed and ratified Tuesday nite acc to redfm and the echo.
Confirmed last night to Southern Star that he is not taking it. The County Board are outdoing themselves on this one
https://twitter.com/KieranMcC_SS/status/650209514164195328
The evening echo were reporting that he was going to be announced as manager on Tuesday! He’s the only man for the job, should be moving mountains to get him.
Yeah I read this ages ago on the 42. We’re not goldfish.