We are sixteen games into the season now which seems too far in to explain Leicester City’s great form, Chelsea’s poor form and many other inconsistencies among the top teams as some sort of aberration.
It is time for some proper analysis and as the guy who predicted an eighteenth place finish for the Foxes, I am definitely your man.
Looking at the Premier League in the first two seasons of our current stay, the league seemed easy to split into three – the top five or six big clubs (depending on your view of Tottenham Hotspur), then the likes of Everton, Stoke City, Southampton and Newcastle United floating in the middle and the rest just desperate to stay up.
It is great that that is no longer the case, even better because it looks like Palace have the look of a side comfortable in that middle tier.
So how has this case happened?
Here are a couple of my theories.
The first is that the Champions League sides have seemed to struggle filling obvious gaps in their squads. But this problem is entirely of their own making.
Either the club has ignored the problem (Chelsea) or paid enormous fees for players who are not quite the finished article (Sterling, Ottamendi, Martial). And these enormous fees are ones that at least fourteen Premier League sides cannot afford.
This conundrum facing the top sides may be the result of Financial Fair Play, where teams do have limits in how much they can spend.
But it may also be the fear of taking risks.
Other than Tottenham (who may be outside the top group and who lost to Newcastle as I was about to praise their smarter approach), the richest sides seemed scared to try out youngsters, perhaps because fans and the press would mock them if they announced that the guys they needed to help them win the title would cost £750,000 from Fleetwood Town or £500,000 from Le Havre.
The top sides seem to limit their transfer targets to high profile established stars, who they know can get into the team, or elite youngsters to fill their academies and under 21 sides. In turn, this has left a large pool of good but less expensive players for the rest of the league to consider signing.
The better television money for mid-table sides in England means that the best of the French-speaking African players in continental European football can be had for affordable sums.
Newcastle may have led the way in this field a few years ago bŷ signing the likes of Cabaye, Sissoko, Demba Ba, Papiss Cisse and Tiote but others have followed their lead.
The difference this season, I believe, has been that the others have been smarter and more selective in buying the right players. Palace, for example, have bought Papa Souare and Bakary Sako, Leicester have Mahrez and Kante, West Ham have Payet. In this case, all are players with transfer fees and salaries that are affordable by ambitious mid-tier clubs.
The key for teams like Palace, Leicester and West Ham is that they have bought players to fill gaps and to compliment players they already have, making them better.
When mid-table teams are paying between £2-7million for that key player, they can afford to make one or possibly two mistakes.
When you are paying £30million plus for a player, the player has to be a perfect fit. Even Chelsea and Liverpool cannot afford their mistakes in signing Fernando Torres and Andy Carroll.
I know we bought Yannick Bolasie back in the Championship days, as did Leicester with Mahrez, and Watford with Ighalo.
But it is the ability to take the risk on that sort of player and give them a chance that has brought the so-called bottom half closer to the top. The likes of Aston Villa and Sunderland who have struggled in recent years, have bought lots of French speaking players but have they bought guys for specific needs or tried to re-build teams en masse. Stoke have added a twist to this by buying players we all know are quality and hoping that they recover form and are happy to play on those wet Wednesday nights.
Scouting seems to have got better for the mid-table sides at the same time the top clubs have got scared.
The second factor in bringing the top sides down a peg has been the positive attitude to play from some of the promoted sides.
Where a side has been promoted playing decent football, why should they change their style, just because they are in the Premier League? Southampton and Swansea led the way a few seasons ago, and in the last two years Leicester, Watford and Bournemouth have tried to play the same style of football that got them promoted – generally emphasising a team ethic, collective defence ball retention, speed of pass and commitment to attack when the opportunity arises.
If we are being honest that is something Palace were unable to do initially in 2013 as we had scrambled to get promoted and lost Zaha and Murray in the process. We had to start from scratch with the Pulis recovery and had too many holes to fill.
While Watford have done better than even their most optimistic fan (my father-in-law!) could have hoped, I think Bournemouth have been the best story of the season. They signed the ‘difference-makers’ Tyrone Mings and Max Gradel to fill gaps in the side and then they got injured along with the key player Callum Wilson. And yet they have gone back to basics and thrived.
I think most Palace fans favourite non-Palace moment was seeing Glenn score the winner at Stamford Bridge. And then this week Bournemouth did it again beating Manchester United.
As a child of the seventies who remembers Chelsea, United and Tottenham being relegated and Derby and Nottingham Forest winning the league, I had thought those days have gone. This season has made me think that despite the absurd financial advantages the top sides have, the old days might just be returning.
Except that in the old days Palace were never sixth at this stage of the season!
