In many ways, it’s a minor miracle Roy Hodgson is still in charge at Crystal Palace. Across two stints, he is now their longest-serving manager this century.
Having first left in May 2021, Hodgson was never supposed to come back. Parachuted in to save the club last March, he was meant to be gone by June. He has now overseen a run of two wins in 15 matches, but there appears to be far less pressure on him from the ownership than the fans. He was supposed to be on borrowed time in December and is now racking up quite a debit.
So what’s gone wrong at Selhurst Park, will sacking Hodgson do anything to rectify it and who could replace him?
What’s gone wrong
On Wednesday, Palace lost a drab FA Cup third-round replay 1-0 to Everton, having failed to beat the 10-man Toffees two weeks earlier at Selhurst Park. On 64 minutes, Hodgson substituted Eberechi Eze, who had been his side’s best player.
The decision was met with boos, derision and choruses of “You don’t know what you’re doing” by Palace fans who had travelled to Liverpool on a midweek evening in January.
“If I was a fan, I wouldn’t have wanted to see Eze taken off either,” Hodgson said after the match.
“But we play [Arsenal] at 12.30 on Saturday and we need people like Eze who is one of our very best players. I would have loved all of my players to play 95 minutes but unfortunately we decided, in order to protect as many players as we can, that we would replace them with players who also deserved a chance to play.
“We’ve got a lot of players here who haven’t had a chance to show what they can do. We keep wanting to see what [Matheus] Franca, [Naouirou] Ahamada & [David] Ozoh can do. The chances are with the team we’ve got at the moment their chances in the Premier League might still be few and far between.”
The final point is a particular bone of contention. Palace have not started a player aged below 21 in the Premier League this season. Two years ago, Palace had the oldest squad in the Premier League and despite promising to lower that, they still have the fourth oldest.
When Franca, Jesurun Rak-Sakyi and Ahamada were brought off the bench against Tottenham in late October, Hodgson publicly said: “They didn’t do anything for us”. He later apologised but has still not made any effort to integrate the young talents.
Twenty-five-year-old Eze and 22-year-old Michael Olise are Palace’s twin jewels and there was huge optimism last summer when Olise committed his future despite interest from Chelsea. The Frenchman has since scored five goals in seven starts this season, despite struggling with repeated injury. Yet Eze has been used as part of a workmanlike midfield three, somewhat restricting his usual free-flowing game.
But everywhere else on the pitch, aside from the solid centre-back partnership of Marc Guehi and Joachim Andersen, Palace’s XI is populated by players who fail to excite.
That Jordan Ayew, who has 19 goals in 179 Premier League games for Palace, is still a guaranteed starter when available says a lot about the sort of player Hodgson is prioritising over academy graduates.
At heart, Crystal Palace’s overarching philosophy is protectionism, not optimism and ambition. That’s a fact, rather than a criticism. With the ever-spiralling money on offer for continued Premier League survival, it’s not so much the coward’s approach as the sensible one. The Championship and League One are full of former mid-table top-flight sides who believed a spot in European competition was just in reach.
Palace have finished between 10th and 15th in every Premier League season since their promotion in 2013-14.
They have only made it past the third round of the FA or Carabao Cup once in the past five seasons, tending to view it as a distraction rather than an opportunity. In 2023-24, they have scored the fourth fewest goals in the top flight but conceded the joint-sixth fewest.
When all of this is combined with 76-year-old Hodgson never being more than a bad week from retirement, there’s no sense something is being built, that this is contributing to anything other than short-term Premier League survival. This means that in the lean times, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for fans to look towards. When this is only ever going to end in Hodgson’s departure, why should that not happen now?
This is exacerbated by the risk-averse football the former England manager promotes. Fans don’t mind being bored if they’re safe, but little can turn a fanbase like the former without the latter. Decisions like Eze’s substitution may be the logical one, but it’s the sort of bare-faced pragmatism fans often struggle to get behind.
Yet as Palace are still 14th, is there really any motivation for owner Steve Parish to sanction Hodgson’s dismissal? This is where they expect to be, and relegation is currently no serious concern. As unbelievable as it can seem, this is the plan.
But that doesn’t mean Hodgson should last forever. Some of the recent poor form can be explained by injuries, but certainly not all of it. There is an array of younger, more exciting managers who would likely be able to at least match what the veteran is achieving. Rolling the dice would be both the best option for the club’s on-pitch performance and the fans’ sanity off it.
Who could replace Hodgson
The obvious choice is the freshly unemployed Steve Cooper, but the fact he hasn’t been brought in already would suggest either Cooper has turned down Palace’s approach, or the club don’t rate him as highly as many others do.
In theory, Cooper would be perfect. At Nottingham Forest he showed he has a rare ability to connect with both fans and players, exiting to a shower of tributes from both.
He has an excellent record of developing youth players. And unlike Hodgson, he is young enough and hungry enough to at least give the air of a man developing something at Palace, rather than just treading water until someone pushes him under.
Former Wolves and Spain manager Julen Lopetegui was spotted at Selhurst Park recently and could be another option, but his wages may well provide a sticking point. He left Molineux in a dispute over the club’s inability to spend in the transfer window, so famously frugal Palace may not be his ideal destination.
Former Eintracht Frankfurt boss Oliver Glasner is another name previously mentioned that could be a good fit, having taken Frankfurt to the Europa League title and DFB Pokal final. He also guided Wolfsburg from mid-table mediocrity to the Champions League in just two seasons, with a balance of defensive solidity and attacking stability familiar to Palace fans.
The final option may well be too expensive, but could be another good fit. Graham Potter has been without a job since leaving Chelsea, and has proven himself to be extremely adept at developing clubs and players with an attractive style of football. Even if he only maintained Palace’s bottom-half mediocrity, fans would enjoy watching it a lot more.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/dLYErvG
Post a Comment