Looking at Saturday’s game logically - rock bottom against the champions
– Palace will finish the day with a played eight, lost eight, pointless record.
And yet, that could still mean being in a stronger position than when Ian
Holloway left back in 2013.
“I don’t want
to criticise my players in any way but we are taking a few blows to the chin...we
are without Zaha, Benteke and Loftus-Cheek and we lost Scott Dann the day
before the game. We are playing with a winger from Wolves at centre-forward.
Add all those things together and we have to accept we are the boxer fighting
in a weight class he is not able to handle at the moment. We are taking the
blows and getting knocked down, but we are attempting to respond and not stay
on the canvas.”
Hard to
disagree with Roy Hodgson’s use of a boxing analogy, given that watching Palace
this season and listening to numerous pundits and ‘humorous’ betting sites
banter Twitter accounts scathing assessments has led me to feel like I’m
repeatedly being punched. And while you could argue on the one hand that
playing teams over the past couple of weeks with the resources and squad
strength of a Manchester United or City, and this weekend against Chelsea, will
always be something of trying to punch above your weight, it still feels a
little uncomfortable trying to portray the situation as a team out of their
depth and a failure to compete seen as inevitable.
The use of
the words “at the moment” is of course the caveat, and Hodgson was probably
trying to articulate that the current injuries, shattered confidence, and in some
games like the one at Burnley a genuine desertion of luck, are making it seem
that the club is stepping in the ring with heavyweights when we are barely a
featherweight. But looking at the situation like that, I feel gives people
something of a free pass.
If the same
quote from Hodgson two weeks ago had come from Steve Coppell in 1997, Iain
Dowie in 2004 or Ian Holloway in 2013 I would have probably been in whole
hearted agreement with the tone. Look at some of the personnel in those teams
that came up and the quality they were coming up against every week. Look at
the money spent at those times compared to the teams around them, and the
argument of not fighting in a weight class they are able to handle holds a lot
of water, but not now. Not after entering a fifth season in the top flight and
not after the money spent and all the hard work. Hard work that looked to have
finally established the club as top flight presence; hard work that is at
severe risk of being flushed away.
The starting
line up that was victorious at Wembley against Watford in 2013 cost just under
£2.5m. In modern football terms that is a drop in the ocean. To try and stay
up, the club did a mad trolley dash of largely unwanted, bargain basement buys,
loans and free transfers, with the only significant outlay of £7.5m on Dwight
Gayle. That team went to Old Trafford and put up much sterner resistance than
the current vintage, ultimately being undone by Ashley Young’s usual pantomime
theatrics. The current squad though includes eight players that cost at least
£10m, with Mamadou Sakho being £26m and Christian Benteke a whopping £30m.
Palace can’t play the pauper card anymore for why they are losing matches.
Games of
football are played on grass rather than on paper, but looking at the talent
and ability in the current side, compared to 2013 for example, why is this team
routed to the bottom of the league tables as a laughing stock with no goals and
no wins?
What the 2013
team lacked in ‘name’ value it made up for in heart and determination, it was a
squad of leaders and big personalities and players that dug in when faced with
adversity. Those are values sorely missing from a horribly disjointed squad
suffering from being put together by too many different managers with such
varying philosophies and personalities. It’s also a squad put together without
seemingly a skilled recruitment and scouting set up, to where it is in the
position of having to go to Manchester United and play a winger from Wolves at
centre forward.
It’s too easy
to say when football teams lose matches that the players ‘aren’t trying’ and
that ‘they don’t care’, and despite the dreadful run of results, I’ve never
felt that’s been the case. There have of course been bad performances, some
awful ones in fact, but never did I think it was a result of the players not
caring or not wanting it. It’s just a group of players that have lost game. A
lot of games. Not just in this run, but for the better part of two years, to
where confidence and belief has been pulverised. As Daniel Storey at Football
365 put it a few weeks ago; ‘it is a Crystal Palace disease. Fifty-four points
from their last 64 league matches under four different managers. Confidence has
not just been pierced; it has deflated and dried out.’
But amidst
the doom and the gloom, the experiences of Palace in 2013/14, in their first
season back in the big time does offer some hope, both for this weekend and for
the whole season. Looking at Saturday’s game logically - rock bottom against
the champions – Palace will finish the day with a played eight, lost eight,
pointless record. And yet, that could still mean being in a stronger position
than when Ian Holloway left back in 2013. At that stage Palace had a mere three
points from ten games, and, as highlighted, with what I would consider to be a
far less talented squad. That was also a team that went on a run of seven
defeats in a row. But incredibly, following the arrival of Tony Pulis and a
back to basics approach, where the game plan was perfectly tailored to the
strengths and attributes of the players available, a near improbable rise
culminated in an eleventh placed finish and Pulis walking away with a manager
of the year award. There you go Roy, there’s your inspiration – it can be done.
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