Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish is delighted to have Dougie Freedman back at the club.

The former Palace manager has been named new sporting director.

"The role of a sporting director, or director of football is one that people talk about a lot," Parish said in an interview with Holmesdale Radio.

"It is like everything and you have to get the right people and I had a chat with Dougie [Freedman] and he said this was something he was thinking about.

"He said the short termism of management had lost its appeal for him a bit and he wanted to be part of building a football club long term and creating all the pathways and doing all the long term things.

"I would definitely agree that is something we haven't been good enough at and we need to be smarter.

"The best period of recruitment for me, was when I worked with Dougie at the club, it is more of a challenge in the Premier League, but I think we can definitely be smarter and join up the academy better.

"I think there's a lot of work we need to do with the academy and that is no disrespect to the people who are involved with it, because they work really hard.

"But there are things we need to do there and we need to be a bit more ruthless about what we have got in the academy and what we are trying to achieve, and I think Dougie can do that, and I am very much enjoying working with him."