The protestations of Crystal Palace fans at the Emirates this weekend felt overdue. But then so do a lot of things at Palace, such is the uneventfulness of their existence. Barely a day goes by where I do think of Crystal Palace. Yet the situation at the club is now heating up to boiling point. The supporters clearly aren’t happy, and it’s worth considering why.
Crystal Palace are, on closer inspection, one of the most fascinating clubs in the Premier League. They are currently busying their way through their tenth consecutive season in the top flight, in the very manner they did for the previous nine. In those ten years, Palace have finished no higher than tenth, and no lower than fifteenth. They’ve never flirted with Europe and have avoided being serious relegation candidates. It’s a record so unremarkable, it’s remarkable.
If the Premier League table was the M1, with every team quickly headed north or south, Palace would be loitering in a service station just outside Leicester. But their occupation of this anonymous lower-middle section of the table has not been as boring or bleak as it suggests.
Think of Andros Townsend at the Etihad, Dwight Gayle crushing scouse dreams, or Alan Pardew’s Wembley boogie. Palace have entertained. In Marc Guéhi, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and – unquestionably – Wilfred Zaha, some of the country’s best young talent has emerged at Selhurst Park. Speaking of, being a spectator there is often a fantastic experience, even when the game itself doesn’t match it. Palace supporters home and away are as passionate and devoted as you’ll get.
Right now, they’re definitely not glad all over. And I can totally see why. If I was a Palace fan, I would be looking around enviously at other Premier League clubs of similar stature who have managed to climb higher. Seagulls aren’t supposed to outfly Eagles, yet the trajectory of rivals Brighton – who not long ago were playing at a small-time athletics track – has been steeper and more inspiring.
‘Wasted potential on and off the pitch. Weak decisions taking us backwards’ is what the banners read on Saturday.
This definitely rings true. Crystal Palace are the league’s resident make-doers. Their life cycle goes like this: develop and sell talented young players, reinvest within their means, beat a Big 6 team under the lights at Selhurst, finish between tenth and fifteenth. Repeat.
Contentment with this routine points to a lack of ambition. So in that regard, supporters are right to feel short-changed. Shouldn’t ten years in the top flight merit more than this? We can’t know for sure what the winning fans at the 2013 playoff final expected, but it certainly wasn’t stagnation.
The worry amongst supporters must be in part due to the fine margin between comfortable mid-table finishes and relegation. The precedent set by Southampton exemplifies how Premier League status cannot be taken for granted. Following four top-half finishes and a taste of European football the Saints got complacent and wobbled around the wrong half of the table. Ralph Hasenhüttl steered them away from danger until he could no longer. In 2022/23 he got the sack, and Southampton hit rock bottom.
The truth is that Southampton were a ticking time-bomb for five seasons before their eventual demise. There just happened to be three worse teams in the league. You can make a fair case that Crystal Palace have now taken on that mantle. Swap out Hasenhüttl, and it’s Roy Hodgson as the competent but limited caretaker.
Roy spoke diplomatically after Saturday’s embarrassing defeat. If he’s sacked anytime soon there could be a job for him in the Foreign Office. It’s not like retirement appeals to the veteran coach.
“All I would say is they (the fans) are totally entitled to their opinion. I do understand their frustration, even anger and disappointment that things haven’t got better… If we are going to go forward and avoid relegation and do well, we need these fans with us. Hopefully we can keep them on board and the best way to do that is by winning football matches and playing better than today.”
It wouldn’t surprise me if it was another manager who carried out the tasks Hodgson outlines. The unemployed Graham Potter, responsible for Brighton’s aforementioned rise, was in attendance at the Emirates.
But to give Hodgson his due, there is an alternative way of viewing Palace’s situation.
The Premier League is a beast. It will happily chew up and spit out any team that takes a couple of missteps. In fact, since Palace came up in 2013 twenty clubs have also celebrated promotion. Of those twenty, only ten are in the Premier League this season. So we’re talking about a 50% chance of survival.
Break it down further, and you can deduce three subcategories of promoted club:
- Established PL outfits: Newcastle, Brighton, Aston Villa, Wolves, Brentford.
- Unsettled PL status: Leicester, Burnley, Bournemouth, Watford, Middlesbrough, Fulham, Leeds, Norwich, West Brom, Sheffield United, Luton, Nottingham Forest.
- Not seeing them in the PL anytime soon: QPR, Huddersfield.
Where do Palace fit? Based on the evidence it has to be the ‘established’ section. But their PL status appears more precarious than the other five, perhaps with the exception of Brentford.
For all the tedium and moans and groans concerning the last ten years, the bottom line is Crystal Palace have fared much better than the promoted clubs who are now jostling for what Palace have: stability.
Should Palace fans not instead reflect on the ten years preceding 2013, rather than the ones following? After all, they so nearly suffered the same fate as clubs like Charlton, Portsmouth and Bolton. If you thought QPR and Huddersfield had it rough, try plotting an escape from League One. Two points kept debt-stricken Palace away from the third division in 2009/10 following a points deduction, and we could so easily have never spoken about them as a Premier League team again for a long, long time.
That lived experience is probably what influences the judgement of chairman Steve Parish and sporting director Dougie Freedman, the latter of whom is a club legend who played and managed at Selhurst Park during their Championship years.
Of course, Crystal Palace could break convention: hand over the keys to John Textor, deploy a ‘Moneyball’ recruitment strategy, go for broke and finally breach Europe. But that project could so easily go down in flames. Parish and Freedman probably see it that way too, and thus battle on knowing they will just about have enough to stave off relegation for another year. This season, it would be the first without the talismanic Wilfried Zaha.
It all comes down to the one thing every football club craves. No, not trophies. Stability. That key word again. Mauricio Pochettino once infuriated Spurs fans and made a meme of himself by likening top-four finishes to trophies. But he had a point. The same notion was more eloquently worded by new Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou ahead of his first FA Cup match. He effectively said the end goal should not be the silverware itself, but positioning the club to compete for silverware on a regular basis. Palace might still be some way off that, but success is relative.
What does the future hold for them? Palace could be West Ham or Brentford, capitalising on their geographical placement to grow their club and looking up the table rather than over their shoulders. But by the same token, they could be Milwall or Charlton – the forgotten quarters of London football – stuck and frustrated lower down the pyramid.
The enlightened view may be that fans care about how stability is achieved. Villa have been propelled by an elite manager who gets results. Brighton have cracked player recruitment. Newcastle have a bottomless pit of petrostate funds. Whichever way it’s done, all three examples speak to purposeful improvements. A clear line of sight in an upward direction. Were Palace to find their own version, they could finally secure that coveted ninth place finish. Accomplish that, and for the Eagles the sky could be the limit.
Chris Perrin 