Football
ESPN staff 9y

Crystal Palace announce sacking of manager Neil Warnock

Crystal Palace sacked manager Neil Warnock on Saturday following the club's slip into the relegation zone, making him the Premier League's first managerial casualty of the season.

Warnock, 66, returned for a second spell at Selhurst Park in the summer following Tony Pulis' departure having kept the club up last term.

Palace slipped into the bottom three on Boxing Day with a 3-1 home defeat to Southampton, their sixth league game without a win. That has led to Warnock leaving Palace for a second time, on this occasion with a win percentage of 18.8 percent.

"Crystal Palace Football Club can today confirm that Neil Warnock has been relieved of his duties and is no longer first-team manager," a statement on the club's official website read.

"The club would like to put on record its thanks to Neil for all his hard work and energy over the past four months.

"[Assistant manager] Keith Millen will lead the team against Queens Park Rangers tomorrow [Sunday] as caretaker manager."

Warnock said he was happy to accept the fans' criticism after the defeat to Southampton. Goals from Sadio Mane, Ryan Bertrand and Toby Alderweireld secured victory for the visitors before Scott Dann headed in a late Palace consolation.

The manager's decision at 3-0 to replace Yannick Bolasie with defender Martin Kelly was greeted with jeers and there were also boos from the home support at the final whistle.

"When you lose a game you're responsible, I've no complaints about that," he said. "Bolasie's wife is having a baby and he was tired before the game today. What with us playing at QPR in not much more than 24 hours, I thought we would just save his legs a bit.

"You know when you take Bolasie off when you're losing 3-0 you're going to get stick, but you just have to think about QPR really.

"I have no complaints, at 3-0 down, you'd be very surprised not to get a bit of stick.

"I thought [the players] were very good today in the circumstances, they were almost as shell-shocked as some of the fans."

Palace have scored just three goals in their last six games, and Warnock admitted his part in the side's lack of potency.

He added: "If I was a player today I'd blame the manager, it's always easy to do that.

"The players know what I feel. We need everyone to be on top of their game. The goals are so poor."

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