Another international week, and not much to report on the Palace front.
Things are more active in the Championship as we have seen the arrival and departure of a couple of familiar faces.
Neil Warnock, the man who cannot retire, has returned to Loftus Road in a caretaker role (for now) while former defender and coach Kit Symons has been sacked by Fulham.
For most of my life, the Championship (or one of its previous names) has been Palace’s home, and this season feels odd because we are not – yet – thinking about getting out of that league or dropping back into it.
Back to Queens Park Rangers and Fulham. Both teams have been relegated in the last couple of seasons, and both seem to be struggling, despite the advantage of having the parachute payment to ease the transition to the lower league.
In fact, the parachute payment has not proved to be of much assistance in getting relegated teams straight back up to the Premier League. Excluding the three sides relegated in 2014/15, if you go back to the previous five seasons, only three of fifteen teams have bounced straight back up – Norwich City last season, QPR the season before, and West Ham United in 2011/12, all via the play-offs too.
If the parachute payments do not help greatly in getting promoted, are there other secret ingredients to getting promoted?
I believe there are a few themes.
The first is having a well-organised, disciplined team that has been built up over a few seasons. Get someone with potential, enthusiasm and perhaps a link to the club and the fans to manage the side, and let him off the odd mistake (like managing Burnley instead of Bournemouth for a bit).
This was the model for Swansea City’s rise and continued stay in the Premier League. The approach remained consistent despite the poaching of two of their managers along the way, and seems to have inspired Bournemouth’s rise which resulted in promotion last May and to a lesser extent Burnley the year before.
Keeping your manager is not important if the discipline, organisation and determination exist in the squad. We saw that at Palace three seasons ago when Dougie left for Bolton Wanderers, and Watford took that to extremes last year when they had four different winners of the manager of the month award.
One of the disadvantages of getting relegated is that the team can be broken up, as the club look to ditch expensive salaries or accept decent transfer fees for players that have performed well in the Premier League.
This is certainly the case for QPR and Fulham, but also sides like Blackburn Rovers, Bolton and Reading who have not been able to sustain challenges for promotion since dropping to the Championship. Middlesbrough struggled to fight back for four or five years before the appointment of Aitor Karanka.
Wigan Athletic and Blackpool have managed to get relegated to the third tier rather than challenge to go back up.
The more of a relegated squad you can retain the better. Even retaining the manager can be a good idea, as Burnley and Hull City are trying to prove this season.
But the relegated sides are a distraction here. Generally it is their incompetence that opens the field for others.
I have argued that it is well run, well organised sides with a smart manager who may have been trusted for longer than the typical ten to eleven month lifespan.
Throwing money at a side with a good size fan base, hiring an expensive manager or three has not worked, either for Palace in the Jordan years, or more recently for Wolverhampton Wanderers, Nottingham Forest or dirty Leeds United. These last three are bigger clubs in terms of history, fan base and attendance but have heroically messed things up for years.
Leicester City’s Thai owners did throw a bit of money at the club but they got promoted off the back of the organisation and discipline approach, perhaps because the players were terrified of the then manager.
Derby County, bless them, have looked to have just the right sort of approach – a few youth players, some smart signings and loan hires but have failed at the final hurdle twice in a row.
Their low profile approach appears to have been copied by our friends on the south coast who were off to a flyer at the start of the season. Their good form has slowed in recent weeks but they might yet reach the heights of excruciating play-off defeat by the end of the season.
It was those weeks seeing Brighton at the top of the league that drew me back to looking at Championship scores. It is nice to see them in second place on goal difference now … rather than first! That was far too distracting.
