April 18 2003

Jordan and Francis

Simon Jordan has revealed that he made the decision to sack Trevor Francis after losing confidence in the direction he was taking the club.

Jordan recently demanded a 'road map' towards the Premiership from his manager but felt his responce wasn't what he was looking for.

Jordan told BBC London 94.9FM: "If you are trying to build something, you have got to be able to see what you are building.

"You have also got to have confidence that if you feel things are not going the right way then in the future they may well be.

"At that time you have got to have the entire club converging rather than diverging, everyone going the right way for the right reason, and I just felt that I wasn't confident enough that we were going to go forward and achieve what I wanted to achieve next season.

"I felt the decision was the right one to make for the football club."

Jordan continued: "The players have to take responsibility for some of their performances, but at the end of the day a football manager is paid to produce a football team.

"Trevor has done a lot of good things, but my biggest focus is next season because I believe we have wasted this year, for whatever reason.

"There has been a lot of talk of a road map or a blue print.

"What I wanted to understand definitively was what was it going to take to put Crystal Palace in the Premiership next season and what I was being given did not fill me with as much confidence as I thought it should do, and I felt it was the right time to make a change."