Friday 28 May 2021

Where next?


Now some of the smoke has cleared and dust settled on Palace’s season, if I had to sum up the 2020/21 campaign in one word it would have to be ‘slog’. The past several months has been a grind, with little to captivate, or get excited about. Bar the odd bright spot; the debut season and form of Eberechi Eze, the re-emergence of a goal scorer in the shell of Christian Benteke and a heist of Ocean’s Eleven proportions at the Amex, this has been a season of uninspiring, dull football, with performances lacking dynamism and cohesion, and a feeling of apathy that has seemingly permeated into all aspects of the club. And yet, at no point did I think we would go down, nor were we anywhere near at risk of doing so. What to make of it then?

The sense it has been a slog has something to do with extenuating circumstances – namely, a global pandemic. No fans at games, matches on a relentless treadmill where you regularly forgot you were playing Burnley at 5 o’clock on a Tuesday and the general doom and gloom of being stuck in your house 95% of the time has all contributed to that air of negativity, yet, more than most, Palace have limped painfully along, and that despite comfortably achieving their principle aim of not going down. And yet therein lies a lot of the problem; it is a club treading water.

On one hand it seems churlish to criticise or complain – this is the most successful spell in the club’s history by several metrics, certainly in terms of the number of consecutive top-flight seasons at 9 and counting. And staying in the elite of the Premier League, with the money and fame is all important, particularly right now, with not just football, but the world in economic and social flux. But while that is the stated aim for several clubs, ultimately, shouldn’t there be something more to aspire to? To try and answer that gets us into some pretty deep and fundamental questions about the very nature of the entire global structure of football and deep-rooted inequalities - best highlighted these past few months by the seemingly short-lived European Super League - but even within the confines of the 12 or so teams whose aim at the beginning of the season is ultimately to stay in the league rather than think about winning it, it feels like Palace’s outlook is particularly prosaic.

The goal for the club is to stay in the Premier League, that’s clear, but what’s it’s vision for doing that whilst at the same time trying to put in place the building blocks, the incremental steps that can potentially put it in a place to shoot for more? Because that is possible. No-one is going to pretend that without a Russian Oligarch, a Saudi Prince, or the sovereign wealth fund of a national state you are going to compete to win the Champions League, but Leicester City have shown what can be achieved. Which is not to say they are paupers, and that they haven’t had strong financial backing, but compared to the waters they have been swimming in they have taken on considerably bigger sharks and won. And there’s other teams, such as a Leeds or a Burnley where there is a clear vision and a strategy to what they are trying to do on the pitch. In these two cases they may be vastly different approaches, but they feel like approaches to where you as a fan can feel invested in the journey, given they look to be following a map rather than just winging it.

Perhaps most gallingly as a Palace fan you can compare yourself to our friends down on the south coast. Brighton has a model and a vision for what they are trying to achieve, and never get tired of telling you about it either. You can argue its merits, and this is a team that have just finished 15th and 16th in their last two seasons, and yet look at the perception from the fanbase and some pundits – it’s a club that people say is heading in the right direction, is on the cusp of a breakthrough, where long-term planning will start to yield success any day now once they can sign a half decent striker. Ultimately only time will tell, but it’s a fascinating contrast when I see Brighton fans largely happy with what they are doing, supportive of their manager and trusting in the ‘process’ (TM Mikel Arteta) compared to Palace fans disillusioned with what they have seen on the pitch this year and fearful of what the future brings, given, after all, we’ve finished above them again (admittedly by a wafer-thin margin).

It is why this summer is so critical at Selhurst Park – for too long the club have papered over cracks and used sticking plasters on some gaping wounds – it can’t keep going for the short-term fix. Looking at his four years at the club as a whole Roy Hodgson has done a tremendous job – stabilising the club when it looked to be headed back to the Championship, comfortably staying in the division in all his full seasons and achieving the club’s highest Premier League points tally, all the while barely having spent any money in the transfer market compared to all the teams around us. Poor performances in cup competitions are a black mark, however.

While it may seem like a distant memory given the pandemic era has felt so long, there have also been spells during those four years where the team has genuinely played positive, enterprising football while crucially still delivering results. Increasingly however and amplified in the period following Project Restart last season and the campaign we’ve just had, the teams’ style of play has looked increasingly laboured and one-paced, with little to no dynamism or creativity. While they say the table doesn’t lie; finishing a hugely comfortable 16 points clear of the drop zone, the underlying numbers suggests it might just be trying to pull the wool over your eyes; third worst defensive record (66 goals conceded), 17th for shots on target (132, or an average of 3.5 a game), the highest amount of goals conceded in the last 15 mins of games (13). While your mileage may vary on all things xG, it usually paints a fairly accurate picture of performances, and on expected goals Palace were third worst (only above 19th and 20th placed West Brom and Sheff Utd) and on expected points, Palace should have been battling it out with Burnley for the third relegation spot.

So, while I wasn’t calling for Roy to be sacked, and want him to be recognised for the fantastic job he has done, his contract coming to an end felt like the right time to say goodbye and thank you. But it leaves a big vacuum, given the stability he brought, and that comes at the same time as the playing staff needs an extensive rebuilding job. Not so much needing just a new patio, but a whole new house. And that’s where a lot of the understandable worry comes from a lot of Palace fans, and why the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ could’ve been added to the club crest over the past several months. But to me, it was still the right time to move on from the Hodgson era – a remarkable period of managerial consistency given our history – it needs someone fresh and different to come in, with the energy required, and the agreement from the Board and power brokers to back their vision for how that massive overhaul can be done.

Now when you normally talk about ‘backing’ a manager in football parlance, the presumption is that means them being given significant funds, but that’s not what I mean in this instance, chiefly because it’s pretty clear we don’t have very much of them. No, when I say Steve Parish and Dougie Freedman need to back the new manager, I mean that they need to let that person control who comes in based on a strategy for rebuilding the side and the way they want to play, and then work together with them to facilitate that. If you were taking a shot for how many times, I’m writing the word ‘vision’ here you’d probably have fallen off your chair by now, but that’s what it needs.

Regardless of how much money has ever been available during his time, to me it feels clear that Hodgson was never backed – that word again – to bring in the players that he wanted to fit his idea of how he wanted us to play. We ultimately can’t know if the style or game plan would’ve ended up radically different had he been able to bring in more of the players he wanted, although I think the team would have had a better sense of what it was trying to do, with less lurches and wild variances in performance from one game to the next. For the majority of his time in charge, it appears that Roy was having to make do and mend, and while I’m happy to be proved wrong, it’s never felt there’s been much join up between those doing the coaching and those doing the player recruitment.

In a season preview for the 2019/20 season, which feels a lifetime ago, I wrote here I said:

‘When Palace were promoted in 2013, it was a club wholly unprepared for the topflight. The first eleven that beat Watford in the playoff final cost just under £2.5m, and the club didn’t have a Premier League infrastructure in place. While the squad as it exists now has seen some significant investment, in the areas of recruitment and scouting the club still appears lacking.’

And:

‘It’s important to remember that Palace are in arguably the most successful spell in the club’s history, when factoring in the consecutive years in the top-flight and the touching distance they were to win the FA Cup in 2016, but true progress continues to be undermined by failings of infrastructure, scouting and player recruitment.’                 

To me, these failings are all still too apparent, and not especially helpful when you consider the number of players out of contract and the number of new faces needed. And that’s why the whole club needs to work holistically with the new manager if we are to move forward, rather than continue to stagnate. If it is to be Sean Dyche, and he wants the team to play with two front men, centre backs that head the ball rather than play it out from the back and wingers to get crosses in, then enable him to do that by trying to sign players with that skillset. If you take a punt on a Valerian Ismael that wants a team with energy that presses high, then don’t give him a squad of holding midfielders that are all 30+. Regardless of who comes in however, and what their style is, there also needs to be the continued drive to bring down the age of the squad and invest in players for the future. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but Palace regularly topping the charts of players lost to injury as well as goals conceded in the last 15 mins of matches with having the oldest squad in the league would appear to have some links.

And that’s where we are right now at the end of May. Whoever comes in as the new manager of Crystal Palace is going to have a full inbox. There is clear, and understandable fear from many that next season could be a real struggle, that without Roy Hodgson’s calming hand on the tiller the boat could be heading for a crash on some very sharp rocks. It’s also no surprise that the name ‘Frank de Boer’ has been on many people’s lips – people are still fearful that the new man is not outside of any boxes. And yet, just because that didn’t work out, doesn’t mean that the club shouldn’t ever try to do anything different and try and be creative and bold in its approach, particularly when such a radical rebuild is required. We’ve had all the old firefighters; we’ve had Pulis, Allardyce, Warnock, Pardew and now Hodgson – if we want to try and move forward, we at least need to stop standing still.                             

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