Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has defended his running of the club but is adamant he will not apologise for the mistake of appointing Frank de Boer.

Parish has faced mounting criticism with Palace bottom of the Premier League and some supporters have blamed him for the disastrous start to the season.

The Palace supremo admits he got it wrong when hiring De Boer in the summer but says he was right to sack him after just 77 days and four League games as manager.

Parish watched from the directors’ box on Saturday as Roy Hodgson lost his first game in charge — a 1-0 defeat by Southampton — and Palace now have no points and no goals from their opening five League fixtures.

Some fans have rounded on Parish, who headed the CPFC 2010 consortium that saved Palace from liquidation seven years ago, and called for an end to his reign at Selhurst Park.

But the club’s co-owner last night made his latest on a podcast run by Palace fans to publicly defend himself.

“As a club we got it wrong and as a chairman I got it wrong with Frank,” said Parish on Holmesdale Radio.

“But I am never going to apologise for taking a risk and trying to improve this club. If I make mistakes in doing it, then I will hold my hands up. But I am not going to apologise. The road to hell is sometimes paved with good intentions.

“I can understand people thinking four games is not enough but results were not good. Frank was here from July 1 and in the end I did not think it was going to work.

“It could have gone on longer but if that then produced the outcome I thought it was going to, then that makes me negligent.”

Parish warned fans calling for him to leave the club to be careful what they wished for. He used the example of how far Charlton had fallen since Alan Curbishley left the club in 2006 after fans felt he had taken the club as far as he could following 15 years in charge.

“People honestly say they want to write off the past seven years because of where we are now,” he said. “I see people saying, ‘it is time to go now’. It is kind of an Alan Curbishley moment if you’re not careful.

“Am I happy with where we are now? No. But am I about to be thrown off course by half-truths, vitriol and people who know one per cent of the facts and are completely irrational in their criticism? Nobody likes the records but the only thing that matters is where we are at the end of the season. We have to try to get ourselves out of it.”

Parish had hoped De Boer would provide a long-term progression at Palace but he has admitted there was “muddled thinking” during a month-long recruitment process.

Match Of The Day pundit and former England striker Alan Shearer said the appointment “smacked of a chairman not doing any homework whatsoever” and Parish has hit back.

“I am not going to write off the past seven years as a failure because [of] Alan Shearer,” he said.

“We possibly agonised over it too much and it was almost muddled thinking. The blueprint that [former manager] Dougie Freedman, [former skipper] Mile Jedinak and [Palace defender] Damien Delaney laid down for us as a club about this togetherness is what we must maintain.

“If there is one lesson we have learned over the past seven years it is that we have to fight. When we get ahead of ourselves and think we are better than we are, we can come unstuck a little bit. That is probably the lesson I have got to learn.

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“We want to get better but we have got to walk before we can run. Maybe I am guilty of being impatient but I am never going to apologise for trying to improve us.”

Parish has also responded to criticism over the club’s failure to sign a striker, having released Fraizer Campbell after his contract ran out in the summer.

Palace were trying to bring in players throughout the summer window but they missed out on a forward when their move for Oumar Niasse, from Everton, fell through on deadline day.

Losing out on Niasse — and a long-term injury to Connor Wickham — has left Christian Benteke as the only senior forward at Palace, who have gone 439 minutes without a Premier League goal and have a squad short of attacking options.

Parish said: “I agree we should have signed a striker. But they [the fans] are going to have to let it go. We are where we are. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world. We have got one striker and we are going to have to make do with that until January.

“It was a very difficult market and it did not go right in the end. I would personally not have let Fraizer Campbell go and that is something I wish I had overruled [De Boer] on.

“Fraizer struggled for goals at times but he came on, made a difference and gave us an option.”

Parish has also hit back at John Salako after the former Palace midfielder and coach said the players are “not good enough”.

“I am disappointed in John, to be honest,” said Parish.

“It is disrespectful to our players. I remember John being an integral part of the first-team system [under Alan Pardew] when we were not having the best results in the world. It is people in glass houses really.”

Parish has also responded to claims that he interferes too much in first-team matters.

He said: “What should a chairman do? You cannot not be involved. For any chairman, whether it is Daniel Levy or Bill Kenwright, you are in there every day working as much as you can to help the manager to further the club. It is impossible not to be involved.”

Palace face Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea in their next three League fixtures and Parish has called on the fans to get behind the team.

Parish said: “It looks like it is going to be a long, hard season but if everyone sticks together, then we can get out of this.

“The more fractious we get, the more negative we get, the harder it gets for everybody.

“My message would be stick with us. Yes, mistakes have been made. But if we work through them together we might get out of it.”