Alan Pardew eases the pressure, then criticises Crystal Palace owners

• Investors at the club perhaps don’t know a lot about football, says Pardew
• Palace manager thanks chairman Steve Parish and fans for support

Alan Pardew earned himself some respite with a first win in eight matches on Saturday but may have done his cause some damage by claiming the club’s American owners “perhaps don’t know a lot about football”.

The Palace manager had been under intense pressure after the 5-4 defeat at Swansea the previous weekend. Palace’s American investors, Joshua Harris and David Blitzer, were believed to have expressed concerns about the club’s league position and rumours suggested Roberto Mancini and Sam Allardyce were being lined up as possible replacements for Pardew.

Related: Crystal Palace beat Southampton to ease pressure on manager Alan Pardew

A comfortable 3-0 win against Southampton looks to have eased that concern, at least for the time being, with the chairman, Steve Parish, giving Pardew a thumbs‑up from the stands after the game. But in paying tribute to Parish, Pardew may have helped to complicate his situation.

“The chairman got a bit edgy this week, as you’d expect,” Pardew said afterwards. “We have a lot of serious investors at the club who perhaps don’t know a lot about football so the chairman has been defending me.

“I always think as a manager at any level, particularly in the modern era, expect the sack. Just expect it; it’s coming at some stage, so just do your job as best you can. Every week, that’s what I try to do”, he went on.

“Sometimes it’s hard to dress up six defeats when you’re the owner of the club and you have investors. Obviously there are things he’s got no control over but he’s tried to offer me all the assistance that he could. He’s been brilliant for me and I just want to say thank you to him really.”

Pardew also had praise for the Selhurst Park crowd who stayed behind the team despite their recent failings. “Football clubs cannot run without their fans. The balance they gave us today on the pitch was just right. It wasn’t negative, it wasn’t over the top – it was pitched just right and I thank them for that. We made a few mistakes at the start of the game, as you would in the nervous position we were in. It was important we didn’t have that negativity when we made a mistake.”

Palace’s next match is away at Hull City. Two tricky fixtures against Manchester United and Chelsea, and Pardew made clear his team need more good results in short order if they are to move clear of the relegation zone. “It was an important message to give the players after the match,” he said. “The six defeats we’ve had, the way we’ve played, we didn’t deserve what we got, but we needed to put that right today. We need to go forward now, on the front foot and next week at Hull is even more important than today. We can’t afford to lose that game. We must go up there and get something.”