ROY Hodgson defended Steve Parish but said he understood supporters’ anger after a calamitous afternoon for Crystal Palace at Brighton & Hove Albion.
Brighton were 3-0 up by the 34th minute after goals from Lewis Dunk, Jack Hinshelwood and Facundo Buonanotte.
Jean-Philippe Mateta pulled a goal back before Joao Pedro added the hosts’ fourth.
Palace also lost Michael Olise to injury just eleven minutes after he had come on.
And to add insult to injury, after the full-time whistle Joachim Andersen and Dean Henderson appeared to argue with away supporters.
Eagles fans had again displayed banners criticising Parish and the owners.
Palace are fourteenth, five points above the relegation zone.
“”I think it is harsh, I think it is wrong. I think Steve Parish has done a fantastic job for the club,” Hodgson said. “We understand the fans are unhappy, we got beaten heavily at Arsenal and came here and our fans expected us to win the game and lost 4-1. It would be unrealistic to expect them to go home happy after that and unrealistic also to think the fans aren’t going to protest. All I can say is we are doing our best.
“Of course you always empathise in the sense, as a fan, you want your team to win. But games have to be analysed. Fans will have come here with high hopes. Unfortunately at the moment, especially given the situation we find ourselves in, not even being able to field a team a bit more capable of doing that, you have to accept it isn’t always going to work out that way.
“Dreams and hopes are one thing but at the same time there is reality and the reality today was, despite our best efforts, we were outplayed by a better team.”
Olise had come on for Jeffrey Schlupp at half-time.
Hodgson said: “Very, very disappointing. With hindsight I know people will say at 3-0 down why bring him on? We brought him on because we had the green light from the medical people that he was able to play the second half. They told us to put him on the bench and not start him.
“When you have one of your best players on the bench, he is there and everyone thinks if he is ready to play half a game, you want to take advantage of that. It would have been tough to say, ‘stay sitting there’. There’s no crystal ball. If someone had said, ’if you put him on, he will pull a muscle’, then we wouldn’t have done so.”
