Southampton skipper Jose Fonte has paid tribute to Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew.
Pardew was in charge of Southampton when they paid £1.2m to sign centre back Fonte from Palace in 2010.
Fonte said: "Pardew was here for six months and gave me the opportunity to join this great club and this project.
"He believed in me because he made me one of the captains and straight away he gave me lots of confidence to come in and do my job, and when we played under him I enjoyed my time.
"He is a great manager and you can see with the job he is doing already in Palace. He started the process in this club so you can never forget that.
"He brought Rickie Lambert, me, Jason Puncheon, he got some good players.
"The main one was Rickie with all the goals he scored. He almost took us into the Premier League on his own.
"Leaving Palace was a hard decision because they were in the Championship at the time and Southampton were in League One."
