Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew says too many tactical changes can erode trust
Wednesday 13 April 2016 08:55, UK
Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew has admitted he is reluctant to experiment too much with different tactics - as it can erode the trust of the players.
Palace slipped from sixth to 16th in the league following a run of 14 games without a win, but eased their relegation fears with a 1-0 win over Norwich on Saturday.
Another win on Wednesday against Everton would all but secure Premier League survival and Pardew admits he had to hold his nerve during their long winless streak.
"Sometimes if you do feel like you need to change the system you don't want to change it dramatically and go too far away with what you have been doing, Pardew told the South London Press.
"Since I've been here we've played perhaps two or three different systems. We have different game plans and tactical plans depending on our opposition but we have two or three different shapes we use and we work off the opposition off of those shapes.
"They've stood us in good stead and we've had amazing results since I've been here but you look at the last period and it's not so good.
"It was a question of weighing up the players, getting the better players coming back, our offensive players, let's just stick to our guns, our processes and we'll come good.
"There's been times when I was a younger manager and woke up one morning and thought 'I might play a sweeper today, that makes sense'. I'm long past those days, trust me.
"Even in those days I used to fight against myself because it's important that what you're trying to put into a football club doesn't change because if you change it the players read into that.
"I didn't want to change what we're about; we've always been about being on the front foot and in our shape, breaking from our shape, quick, counter-attacking, good defensive play.
"The period we had just after Christmas we lost a lot of our counter-attacking players so we had to change it a little bit and it didn't really work for us so that's something I'll look at, maybe we need to have two or three players that give us the ability to change the way we play."
