July 11, 2025: Let’s celebrate! UEFA awarded Crystal Palace the opportunity to WIN the European Conference League. It’s not impossible. After all, look who just won it, 11 days after Palace walked all over them on their home turf.
And the decision’s plain injustice may just put a chip on Oliver Glasner’s shoulder, guaranteeing he’ll be motivated and plotting ways to win. Should I have a bet?
Living the transfer window
With UEFA booting Palace down a grade, how many stars will stay – or will they be tempted away by brighter lights? Regardless of UEFA, appeals and courts … for every fan, the questions still burn… who will we sign? Who will we lose?
So far, Palace have kept it very very small. Sosa and Benitez are internationals acquired for combined fees reported at just £2m, so the big one(s) …. Well, no Premier League club can afford to leave money in the bank, then lose matches. But, as the legendary Johan Cruyff once said: “I’ve never seen a bag of money score a goal.” And new research shows most big transfers don’t work.
But still Palace are shopping, and this window is more important because the club went so cheap last summer. We now must recognise that persuading Glasner to stay for years may depend a lot on what he sees the club doing about delivering his wishes in this window. To get a view on how Glasner will react, it may be useful to watch what the Austrian watches.
His first consideration is evidently to get an edge on our closest competitors. Last summer’s comparison was very unfavourable, as highlighted by Glasner himself. On October 26, 2024, he compared spending at clubs around Palace after we had finished 10th:
“Read the table. Ninth was West Ham who invested £140m, eighth was Manchester United, and seventh was Newcastle. So to improve we have to overtake one of the and when we look back, Fulham were thirteenth, investing £50m net and Brighton were eleventh investing £180m net. These are the surroundings of us, we SAVED £20m net.”
Zero net transfer spending in Glasner’s first full season only underlines the sheer brilliance of the record points haul and the FA Cup triumph he achieved. This window, Glasner may not tolerate a repeat.
It’s not just who you buy
As Trevoh Chalobah showed, loans can add outstanding positives. But loans cost money, and can we ignore how we boost the value of Chelsea players who had been unused and unloved at Stamford Bridge? It’s happened now with Loftus Cheek, Chalobah and maybe even Chilwell.
And, since Palace now sees itself as a top club, is it so attractive to use up one of our first eleven spots to increase the value of somebody else’s player?
Revealing the club’s squad strength strategy
Last season, Glasner’s strategy was to go with 20 proven PL players, leaving squad gaps for youngsters to grow into. It’s easy to understand. Youngsters with special talents get gaps to play for. It seems to have worked already for Devenny and Kporha. Guehi, Eze, Wharton, Henderson and Mitchell have already proved Crystal Palace is now the number 1 pathway to the England team in the country. Right now, gaps in the Palace squad now beckon kids with special talent.
Within this “lean squad” strategy, however, there must always be a balance. You only have to look at the bench for answers. Where we don’t play well, obviously we need a bench that gives Glasner strong choices to change games. Injuries, suspensions and poor form will always be a risk to numbers available and, with such a thin squad, these will inevitably have much worse impact.
And Palace can’t risk a repeat of last season, where too often we were uncompetitive from the bench. At Wolves, for example, the bench of 9 included 4 kids and 2 keepers. After 12 years in the Premier League, surely Palace are too big now to go into games with such blatant undermanning – aren’t we?
The next few weeks will reveal what we can expect from the coming months.
Time for the silly season
Strap on your red blue giggle goggles because we are now in the weeks when logic is too often overruled by anticipation and excitement. Take fans’ predictions for example. This time last year, The Guardian invited fans to predict where their team would finish 2024-25.
According to fans’ predictions for their own team, here’s last season’s league table:
1 Man City
1 Liverpool
1 Arsenal
3 Spurs
4 Newcastle
4 Villa
5 Chelsea
6 Man United
6 Brighton
7 West Ham
8 Bournemouth
8 Palace
9 Fulham
10 Wolves
10 Everton
13 Brentford
15 Forest
15 Ipswich
19 Leicester
19 Southampton
Ludicrous! This shows why most fans end up disappointed.
Fans last season predicted that 15 clubs would finish in the Top Ten! Brentford and Forest were the only ones who exceeded even the wild preseason expectations.
This is when “Experts“ make predictions too
On August 17, 2024, Gary Lineker spoke about Crystal Palace:
“I don’t think they’ll finish quite as high as last season, I suspect because one or two players will go. So I’m going to get them struggling a little bit but avoiding relegation.”
Alan Shearer:
“Ditto. I think the same, I think last season where they finished in and around mid-table, I don’t see them doing that again. I think they’ll be three or four spots below that. So I’m going to be the same as you Gaz.”
Micah Richards also predicted the Eagles to disappoint us.
“I think they could struggle, depending on what happens with Eze, but they could struggle big time. I’m saying just avoid relegation for Crystal Palace.”
Pay no attention to the “Experts”!
Depending on comings and goings the next 7 weeks, Palace face the coming season with arguably our strongest platform ever. Last season was the club’s best ever. The manager is the best we’ve ever had.
And this season, our chances of success are improved because we start with mostly rested players. Last year, remember, we kicked off with severe handicaps. Across Europe and South America, no fewer than six of our players were involved in the stratosphere of a cup final with a nosebleed rating second only to the World Cup Final itself. Even Premier League football will have been a step down. This year, only Chris Richards will lose several weeks of R&R as he’s still playing with Pochettino’s USA.
What will we see this season?
Obviously, it will depend on who’s available but, somewhere in his countless quotable quotes, Glasner has already told us the plan:
“For me, what is important is we play our way, we play with confidence, we play forward, we try to score goals. We know we can score goals all over the pitch and we can be very tough to play against. You also can win against bigger teams if you have a good spirit, if you have a good plan, if you believe in yourself. If you work very hard together, it’s possible.”
And there’s no question about the fightback character of this team, or its ability to go to big stadiums, be short of stars and still leave their opponents happy to grab a draw.
When we’re up against it, we’re good at staying in the game. We’re in nearly every game for every minute – only the second half at City and the first half at Newcastle saw us failing to compete last season and, in 48 league and cup matches, we only lost 5 times by more than one goal. Staying in the game doesn’t only produce better results, it also breeds confidence in the players.
Only 4 weeks to Wembley!!!
