What Are The Realistic Expectations For This Season Now?

Having been guilty (along with virtually every Palace supporter) of getting over excited after our Wolves win in early November, the past seven weeks have brought everyone down with a bit of a bump. As ever, much depends on the expectation for the season.

For those thinking that with our new management team and our talented additions, we should be pushing for at least a top ten finish and maybe a Europa League place, these last few weeks have been nothing short of a disaster. For those who view forty points as a reasonable objective for a club of Palace’s size and current trajectory, we are probably about where we should be.

Much as it would have been nice to think that our form and consistent performances up until mid November meant that we had cracked the transition to high possession, pressing football, that in fact would have been a massive over performance in what was always likely to be a transitional, challenging season. Bearing in mind nearly every pundit had us nailed on for relegation at the start of the season, it was never likely to be smooth sailing, even if I viewed the pundit’s pessimism as overdone out of ignorance. Realistically we are about where we should be and in fact are probably doing a bit better than I had expected/feared as the close season unfolded.

I have looked at this season as a series of hurdles to be negotiated and so far Patrick Vieira and his management team have been pretty successful in negotiating them. The first hurdle was building a (mostly) new squad that was capable of playing Vieira’s preferred style. This transition was always going to take time over the summer and the gears did not really start to click until the second half of the West Ham away match in August. From that point until the end of November everything was going well. Okay, we drew more matches than we should have but we were playing consistently well and getting at least what we deserved from each match.

The next hurdle was how we would handle the inevitable injury/form setback. In our case that started in the second half of the Burnley match and was in full flow by the Aston Villa home match. All of a sudden the loss of one James Macarthur had us at sixes and sevens- we were losing all of the battles in the midfield, passes were going astray and we looked clueless as to how to score a goal. During the next two narrow losses we improved on the Villa performance but only marginally and it seemed clear to me that Vieira was searching for a playing combination which could get us back on track. Through what looked to be a bit of trial and error we hit upon the combination of a midfield of Hughes, Gallagher and Kouyate which did the trick, as evidenced by our fairly comfortable win over Everton. Second hurdle negotiated!

Since Everton we have drawn, lost and won and each of those matches has presented its own challenges, mainly the loss of key players and Vieira himself to Covid. What these three matches have shown is we are becoming a more professional and mature unit as the season has progressed. During the Southampton match we started well, totally lost our way and then found a way to get back into the match and rescue a point. The Spurs match was a disaster after the first twenty minutes including the loss our best player due to a totally needless red card. Given these circumstances playing Norwich City (even a very Covid depleted and out of form Norwich) two days later risked a demoralising loss of points, but the players collectively rose to the occasion and put in the sort of performance you would expect for a solid, comfortable Premier League club. These sort of performances were a trademark under Roy Hodgson when playing lower table opposition and being able to replicate this under Vieira (even when he is not available) is for me a huge step towards reinforcing our credentials as a mid table or higher Premier League club.

There are clearly new hurdles on the horizon, in particular the looming departure of Zaha, Ayew and Kouyate (three of our best players over the past few matches) to the AFCON. Although this is not surprise and will have been planned for it will still deprive us of some key players in a busy part of the season. Although the loss of these players does make me nervous, I have seen enough over the course of the season to have some confidence that Vieira and his management team will figure out a way to accommodate the loss of these players.

There are still plenty of ways in which this season could go horribly wrong, but to me one of the key markers of a quality football manager is their ability to find a way around loss of players or form during the season. In my opinion this was the difference between Alan Pardew and Roy Hodgson. Roy was always able to figure out how to deal with these issues when they inevitably arose. I was never convinced that Pardew had that same ability and his sacking in December 2016 was the end result. I may be slightly overoptimistic at this stage of the season but I have seen enough from this Palace squad and Vieira’s management skills to believe we will be able to deal with whatever hurdles do come up during the course of the remainder of the season.

Going back to the original question, given all the changes which have taken place in the squad, management and playing style I do think a mid-table finish is realistic. With luck re injuries we could be a bit higher and with bad luck we could be a bit lower. Hopefully we have seen enough that a relegation struggle should be a remote possibility.