Living The Dream With Patrick Vieira

Have you ever wondered? When Patrick’s head hits the pillow at night, where do his dreams take him?

Realistically, Patrick’s favourite dream probably takes him one day to the Emirates, with 60,000 Gooners singing his name as he leads them to a trophy.  Just now, though, that seems a very far fetch for two reasons:  first, it’s 18 years and counting since Arsenal lifted the Premier League trophy when Vieira himself captained the Invincibles.  Since then, nothing in the league.  Second, there’s the small matter of a gritty little Spanish fella currently occupying the library hot seat, with heels dug deeper than a lunging Granit Xhaka tackle.

It would likely take a string of Arsenal defeats to bring Arteta down and pull Patrick’s dream closer to reality.  And, of course, Patrick needs to show real success at Slurst.  So, if his Arsenal dream is currently consigned to the box marked Fantasy, where will Patrick’s dreams take him tonight?

Snoozing through the halftime break

It’s one of the mysteries of the season, but every Palace fan knows it deep down – that sinking disappointment of where we mostly find ourselves when the halftime whistle blows.  The stats confirm what we all feel:

First half – if football were a 45-minute game, the risk of relegation would be very real right now:

P25 W5 D9 L11 GF 10 GA 20 Pts 24

Second half – if the second half was all that counted, Palace would be comfortably top half in the Premier League:

P25 W10 D7 L8 GF 22 GA 16 Pts 37

How Patrick must dream of a halftime break where we’re in such a positive position that he can stroll into the dressing room, snap his KitKat, put his feet up and say:  “Take a break, lads.  You’ve earned it.  Great job!  Keep it going in the second half.  All the way to the end.”  But ….. and it does seem that there’s always a but …..

Smooth Sailing Through The Final 15

It’s not often that the stats are so definite.

While we fans consume our halftime pints and pies, Patrick really does work miracles.  There have been 28 league and cup matches since Patrick took over, and the score 30 minutes after halftime has been better for Palace or at least no worse than it was at halftime in 25 of those games.  Only 3 times has this segment of the game seen the score get worse – all away from home, at Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham.

Minutes 46-75 (33% of game time) have seen Palace score 40% of their goals this season and concede only 17%.  This is truly the Palace Purple Patch.

Beyond that, however – as we all know, in the period from 75 minutes onwards, the Palace ship often gets shaky, we lose goals and we drop points.  And it’s still happening.

So Patrick’s most frequent favourite dream just now is probably a 90-minute performance with 3 points at the end of it.

The Outball That Keeps Possession

Whenever Palace are pinned back in front of their own goal, and when the ball falls to a Palace player, the first pass out is critical.

A rushed clearance is almost certain to hand the ball back to the opponent, setting up another attack on our goal, making it so hard to escape our half.  Yet this is what Palace now do, more often than not.  Yet we have shown we really can play this ball to a red and blue shirt.  Like the dream 20-pass move that took us the length of the pitch to score at Brighton.

An accurate outball is a dream come true for Patrick simply because it provides a foundation for attack.  If you can, check out the Man City away game.  Time and again, the Palace outball that day was near perfection, achieved against a team which itself touches perfection most weeks.

A Pass Inside The Full Back

By changing the formation against Chelsea, Patrick showed he loses sleep on this one.  I’m sure that Patrick’s dream of controlling possession does not include endless passing backwards and sideways.

Forward momentum is hard to achieve when the ball is played to a man who’s standing stock still with his back to goal.  Yet we – and Patrick – endure the recurring nightmare of passes to the feet of Zaha and Olise, standing still on the touchline, so we hand two of our fastest and best players a mountain to climb.  Receiving the ball to feet, they face a standing start and yet we expect them to beat the full-back.  This slows forward momentum, gives opponents time to double team our key attacking players and reduces our attacking efficiency. Just when they want to be taking quick steps to pick up speed, our fastest players are hemmed in, so they play the ball straight back to the full back.  And off we go again, moving the ball towards our own goal.

The switch to 4-2-3-1 against Chelsea shows Patrick recognises how dangerous Zaha and Olise can be.  Most opponents now play comfortably with a fair bit of green grass behind their back line, but how often do Palace play a clever pass into that space?  That foot race we love to see, where Zaha or Olise takes on a defender who’s disadvantaged by having to make a 180-degree turn before he can begin the chase ….. this is truly a thrilling sight that’s highly likely to turn into a goal scoring opportunity.  Just look at the Wolves game, where McArthur’s simple pass inside the full back set up Zaha for that break through first goal.

The game plan against Chelsea was clearly designed to get Zaha and Olise in dangerous positions behind their defence.  This tells us Patrick dreams of making this happen – and that he’s prepared to change his favoured formation, just to make the dream come true!

A Quick and Capable Right Back

First, let me be clear.  I love Joel Ward.  Cut Joel and he bleeds red and blue.  And hardly a game goes by without him saving a goal with some kind of heroic rescue in front of our net.  But….

He’s not as young as he was, his contribution to attacks is less than we need, and he does get beaten for speed.  The memory of that Norwich winger easily outstripping Joel to set up a first-minute gameplan-trashing goal must give Patrick night sweats.

A SofaScore analysis of the first half of the season found that, statistically, Joel is the worst performing right back in the division.  His crosses are poor, his tackles are not much better.  Even Roy recognised that we could improve on Joel when an almost untried Wan-Bissaka was promoted above him.  Once AWB was sold, Nathan Ferguson’s arrival appeared to signal that Palace had a young and quick replacement.  But nobody could have foreseen the unlucky Ferguson would still be waiting for this first start 18 months later – and now be sidelined by yet another injury.

If Ferguson isn’t a certainty to recover, Patrick must be dreaming now of a summer transfer budget that includes the cost of a Premier League-ready right back who’s quick, fit and contributes at both ends of the pitch.  Let’s all hope that we don’t have to sell Eze to create the cash pile needed to bring in a worthy new right back.

The Return of the Press

To win games again, Palace need the ability to change the pace and up the tempo.  This is where the press makes such a difference.

Somewhere this season, the press went missing, and we need it back – fast.  Earlier this season, Palace were a purring machine, pressing hard and forcing errors in the opponent’s half, mostly defending far from our own goal, and Patrick must’ve been waking up most mornings with a smile on his face.

Now, the press is rarely seen, opponents move the ball into our half without much discomfort.  This regression is costing us points, so it’s most likely to be keeping Patrick awake at night.

Conclusion

You dream, I dream, we all dream.  While it’s rare for any of us to dream that someone else’s dreams will come true, here I am, hoping, longing, praying, that very soon I’ll see Patrick’s dreams come true.