All aboard! Let’s climb into the helicopter for an Eagle’s eye view of where we are as 2022 gets under way.
Let’s remove the red and blue giggle goggles for a hard look at the main question: do we as Palace supporters now have genuine cause for optimism?
Yes we do, with a reservation here and there, yes we certainly do!
To arrive at this answer, we examine the Top Ten critical factors impacting the future of our club. Deliberately, this review ignores the game-by-game issues that fill our daily thoughts – like injuries, Covid, Brighton, team selection, bad refs, Brighton, our keeper giving the ball to the opposition striker in front of our goal, Brighton and more. Putting our laughter, stress and worries to one side, we instead check back realistically to where our club was this time last year and compare that to our outlook right now.
In January 2021, a series of factors clouded our future. Today, this dark and concerning place has largely been left behind. How? The Crystal Palace FC board took some big risks last year, in order to be able to make the impressive strides listed here that have transformed the outlook of every Palace supporter. There’s still a long, long way to go – but look how far we’ve come!
Loving our Premier League status
Jan 2021: For an 8th season in a row, Palace were safe but stuck firmly and steadily bottom half in the Premier League – with relegation just far enough away that, while we have all felt concern at times, the cold fear of going down has mostly been someone else’s problem.
Jan 2022: Palace currently stand near the top of the bottom half and, with just a little luck against Brighton at home, Arsenal, Newcastle, Leeds and West Ham, we would have had 8 more points, and we’d be 8th, just behind Manchester United.
Hugely Improved Finances
Jan 2021: Money was painfully tight because of Covid. With all games played in empty stadiums, matchday income had vanished. Only a handful of arms had been vaccinated, and the return of crowded stadiums to generate vital income was a vision too vague to put a firm date on. Like most clubs at the time, Palace were probably just wishing, hoping and borrowing.
Jan 2022: Matchday income and fans are back – for now at least. Club finances were transformed last summer when Jon Textor injected 87.5m into club coffers in return for a reported “close to 18%” stake in the club. If this reporting is accurate, Textor’s investment means Crystal Palace FC has a valuation of around 500m, a breathtaking number and a stunning achievement when you think the club was facing closedown as recently as 2010.
Brave recruitment of a new manager
Jan 2021: Roy Hodgson was manager and saviour, as he’d already led us to safety from relegation 3 times, but he was out of contract in 6 months. As Roy was already in his seventies, there was no sign of a long-term plan, and it seemed worryingly likely that the security blanket Roy provided would soon disappear, with no certainty of what would come next.
Jan 2022: The process of replacing Roy wasn’t remotely straightforward, and Steve Parish kissed a lot of frogs. Patrick Vieira was not the club’s first choice, nor its second, and he had no prior experience of managing in the Premier League. His track record in New York and Nice was nothing special, and he had been out of the game for several months. But …. So far, so terrific! While the new manager has only just begun his work at Palace, he is already widely regarded as having performed with distinction in this first half-season with the club, And he has 30 more months under contract.
Profound change in playing staff
Jan 2021: For 8 key players, just 6 months remained under contract to Palace. And there was no certainty that cash would be available to buy replacements.
Jan 2022: Bringing in a new investor in the summer was an extraordinarily clever move that made funds available to the club to replace departing first team players. Identification of replacements was, quite simply, outstanding – so was the process of fending off competitors for the signature of these new stars and then turning them into Palace players. Three of the new recruits had zero Premier League experience, yet every one of them (Andersen, Guehi, Olise, Hughes, Edouard and Gallagher) has already proved to be an outstanding squad member, producing performances we fans can be truly proud of.
The tricky news: 6 months from now, in another major expiration event, contracts on 7 more of the first team squad will end. All are over 30 years of age, however, so Palace get another opportunity to improve the quality of the squad and slash the wage bill. And don’t forget, at this same time, Palace have some exciting youngsters coming through, not least Rak-Sakyi, Banks, Street, Adaramola, O’Brien, Wells-Morrison and Omilabu.
Cutting average age of the squad
Jan 2021: The team was the oldest in the Premier League, heavily reliant on experience just to cling on to a spot in the top flight. Without Zaha, it was almost impossible to win a league game. And home grown talent was effectively blocked from reaching the first team. The only exception in the last ten years was Aaron Wan Bissaka, promoted only because every first team squad full back was injured or banned, and sold because the offer was just too good to ignore – and we needed the money.
Jan 2022: Average age has dropped significantly, energising matchday performances. And the changes achieved already mean that the Zaha one-man team tag no longer applies.
A positive change in playing style
Jan 2021: On the pitch, Palace had for years played – and were still playing – a passive game depending on defending in a low block, perpetually struggling to grab scraps of possession, with goal attempts a disheartening rarity. Frankly, watching Palace was too often too dull to discuss it.
Jan 2022: The new manager has already transformed the Palace playing style. The team now frequently takes the majority share of possession, presses opponents hard (especially at home), plays the majority of most games in the opposition half, and goals scored have already increased over 25% from 1.15 per game last season to 1.42 during this campaign. Fans are also seeing evidence of game plans that work, and positive signs that in-game management is on the upturn. Two examples: 3 times, against Leicester, Man City and West Ham, introducing Olise from the bench has proved to be a game changing masterstroke. Against Millwall, the manager’s halftime French hairdryer instantly changed Michael Olise from first half midfield ornament into 15-minute touchline matchwinner.
Goals from here, there and everywhere
Jan 2021: We didn’t score many. And, when we did find the net, the scorer’s name was almost always Zaha or Benteke. Goal threat was so concentrated that these two were the only players who scored more than 4 goals in the entire Premier League season.
Jan 2022: Capabilities of Vieira’s Palace team are still evolving. But already, goal threat is incoming from all over the pitch. In just the past few weeks, the most recent 14 goals scored in the league have come from no fewer than ten different scorers.
Progress in the FA Cup
Jan 2021: Another timid third round exit without scoring once, this time at Wolves. Palace deployed a weakened team chosen by a manager who had never won the FA Cup and who was incentivised to put the league first and keep us up, not shoot for the moon and win the Cup.
Jan 2022: Palace have a new manager who has personally won the FA Cup five times, so he knows in his heart what the Cup can do for a club and its players. It’s no surprise that Patrick Vieira took to Millwall almost his strongest team and then ripped the paper off the dressing room walls at halftime after an exit-worthy first half performance. Patrick would love nothing better than to lead the Palace out at Wembley – it’s a wild dream, a huge ask, but hey, you’ve got to be in it to win it and we have a winnable fourth round home tie for the first time in years. League fixtures this spring will test us with a list of home games against the top teams in the land, a series of ideal tests for the kind of games we will face if we now embark on a Cup run that takes us deep into the competition.
If we ever need to sell a player…
Jan 2021: The long-term policy of relying on older players meant that, if it ever became necessary to sell a player to generate funds, only two players (Zaha and the newly acquired Eze) were worth anything much in the transfer market.
Jan 2022: Selling a player is obviously unthinkable right now, but it must not be overlooked that the club’s new strategy in the transfer market means that it now possesses several players who would today attract significant bids. Andersen (established international with Euro 2020 Finals experience), Guehi (England U-21 captain), Olise (best in the Premier League for goal contributions per 90 minutes played), Edouard and Mitchell (No 1 tackler in the Premier League) have all joined Zaha and Eze as players who, if they became available, would fetch bids of 20m or more. It will be fascinating to see if Newcastle’s window of wad-waving will increase the valuations of these skilful and increasingly established Premier League players.
Exploiting the value of Palace’s most precious asset
This year, last year, every year, one thing that doesn’t change is the special kind of support that Palace fans generate through every minute of every match.
I first became aware of this support in the 1997 Play Off Final. A grinding struggle at Wembley against Sheffield United, the match was goalless with ten minutes left when – out of nowhere – Palace fans just started singing, very loud. And they did not stop until the match was decided. It was a spontaneous action designed to lift the team to victory and promotion to the Premier League – and it succeeded!
Jan 2021: Slurst was a bit of a library, with fans finding it hard to shout and sing for performances born of pragmatism not passion.
Jan 2022: It’s a virtuous circle as this team keeps fighting and these fans keep singing. In the 81st minute of the first game of 2022, Palace were in a hopeless position, losing 3-0 at home to West Ham. Where fans of other teams would have been sneaking out or waiting for the whistle so they could boo their team off, the Holmesdale Fanatics roused Palace fans around the ground to sing, loud, long and constant, to lift the team towards the result their efforts had deserved. And it very nearly worked as Palace scored twice in 7 minutes and, with the last kick of the game, fractionally missed a third as Mateta beat the keeper but unluckily saw his overhead kick bounce just wide.
This uniquely positive support for the team, no matter what the score, creates a wondrous synergy between fans, manager and players that is potentially hugely valuable as we move forward.
And the passion of the crowd has caught the attention of Patrick Vieira. After the recovery against West Ham had come so close to grabbing a point, he commented:
We may lack experience but what we have in the dressing room is players who really look like our fans, that means believing until the last minute.
Long may it last!
1 comment
Great article Jon. Thanks for taking the time to write it and UP THE PALACE!
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