I am still in a state of shock, as I am sure many Palace supporters are. The new dawn of an era of progressive football played by a steady flow of young, technically gifted footballers is over before it really got started.
Except of course it is not because we are suddenly playing exciting football again, masterminded by Roy Hodgson who was deemed past his sell by date by many Palace supporters and best left to his pipe and slippers (or should that be comfy old shoes).
How did it come to this and where did it go wrong? And how can we avoid getting into this scenario again next season?
Since the St Patrick’s Day sacking the standard line is everyone wanted Patrick Vieira to succeed. Of course, no one wants their manager to fail but so many things felt right about Vieira. A football great as a player with a progressive football philosophy, he also was a black manager of a club with one of the most ethnically diverse catchment areas in London, if not the United Kingdom. Vieira clearly understood the club and its supporters and his enthusiastic and genuine support for the Palace For Life Foundation proved that. Finally he conducted himself with class and grace, never once referring to his own playing career despite given ample opportunity to do so by certain journalists who clearly could think of nothing more interesting to ask him about.
Vieira should still have a successful managerial career ahead of him and the first season and a bit of this season show that. All Palace supporters will have some great memories from that period – the away victory over Manchester City, the FA Cup quarter final demolition of Everton and home victory over Manchester United are just some of the enjoyable matches we witnessed. Nothing should take away from those achievements.
Unfortunately what did it for Vieira was a lack of experience which would have enabled him to come up with solutions when times got hard. Every football manager will hit those rough patches and the acid test of a top manager is how they cope. Hopefully Vieira will have learned from this test but sadly it was one he failed, this time.
Although there is always a tendency to want to find a simple explanation for any problem, the reality is more complex. Last season Vieira had the right players to play the type of football he wanted to play. He still deserves massive credit for shaping that squad into a successful unit playing his style of football, but this season it quickly became clear that all of the playing ingredients were not there for him. Vieira was able to just about make it work despite the handicaps in the squad during the first third of the season but the away matches at Leicester, Everton and Forest all were warning signs of what was to come.
After the World Cup the wheels started to come off. After the home humiliations by Fulham and Spurs Vieira showed some tactical flexibility by changing his possession based style to something more defensive and hard to beat. Given the daunting fixture list we had during this period this was sensible and showed a real willingness to adapt his style to suit the circumstances.
The difficulty was that Vieira did not seem to have the tactical (and perhaps man management skills) to get the right balance between attack and defence during this set of challenging fixtures. The turning point for me was the away defeat at Villa. This was clearly a match that Vieira had targeted as one to reintroduce the possession based football he preferred. For about ten minutes we were back to our best but after a disallowed goal and a counterattacking goal from Villa, the balloon burst and we could have been on the pitch for 24 hours and we would not have scored.
The following two matches did nothing to change that narrative and it was looking like Vieira did not have the solution to the predicament we found ourselves in. We will never know if Patrick would have kept us up with the easier run of fixtures we are now enjoying but there was almost nothing after the World Cup break to suggest he would change our downward trajectory.
A number of players were clearly underperforming this season under Vieira, in particular Eberechi Eze, Jeffrey Schlupp, Tyrick Mitchell and Odsonne Edouard. Even Cheick Doucoure was starting to falter. The different approach to man management taken by Roy and Ray has clearly paid instant dividends and for me is the most damning indictment of Vieira’s skills as a manager.
A successful manager must be able to get the best out his players and a key part of that is having a good feel for what motivation each player needs. Roy and Ray clearly get that and always have for us. Ironically, Vieira’s playing career may not have helped him here. As someone who had such a world class playing career he may not have been able to understand the psychological make up of players who may not have had the exceptional mental strength that he had to be one of the very best players in the world.
Assuming we do stay up under Roy and Ray, the big question will be who do we get in next. I doubt Roy and Ray will have the desire to carry on next season despite the magnificent job they have done to date. There are already names floating about but there is little point speculating at this stage. What is clear however is we need a manager who can cope with adversity when it arrives whether that is injuries, a lack of recruitment or just a run of bad luck.
In the Championship, Neil Warnock and Ian Holloway had the skill to do that and Roy Hodgson proved that in every one of the four years he managed us in the Premier League and is doing it again at the moment.
I don’t think that the manager has to have Premier League experience specifically but they must have a track record of finding solutions over a number of years in a top European league. Otherwise I fear the cycle under Vieira will repeat again in the years to come and sadly Roy and Ray may be less willing to hang up their slippers next time.
