From the outside, Crystal Palace might not look like a Premier League club in crisis.
They haven’t been deducted any points (and aren’t in danger of losing any) and sit 14th in the table with a five-point cushion to the bottom three. This is their 11th consecutive season in the Premier League which marks their longest-ever spell in English football’s top flight. In Eberechi Eze and Michael Olise, they possess two of the most gifted young footballers in Europe.
And yet an increasing number of supporters are growing disillusioned with their club’s direction of travel. Agitation is turning into apathy and slowly morphing into anger. Grumblings of discontent that had been quietly bubbling away in the background have become louder.
During last month’s 5-0 hammering to Arsenal at the Emirates, Palace fans unfurled a banner that read: “Wasted potential on and off the pitch. Weak decisions taking us backwards.”
In their next away game, a 4-1 thrashing against arch-rivals Brighton a similar message was projected: “No fight no pride. Weak leadership at all levels is strangling the Palace spirit. Fans deserve better.”
Sometimes a football club’s plight is easy to spot from a mile off. That hasn’t really been the case at Palace, though, at least beyond the Selhurst bubble, with pundits and fans of other clubs expressing surprise at the rising dissent.
“They are perfectly entitled to have complaints,” said Gary Lineker on this week’s The Rest Is Football podcast. “But overall they have been in the Premier League for a long time. How can a side like that compete with those big clubs above them? Part of the ground is a Sainsbury’s.
“It’s difficult to imagine circumstances where they could conceivably get to European football. So survival realistically for Crystal Palace has got to be success. But fans will always want more and I understand that, we all do and sometimes we are guilty of thinking the grass is greener on the other side.”
Lack of ambition and direction
The crux of their complaints revolves around a perceived lack of ambition.
Palace have impressively established themselves as Premier League mainstays since being promoted in 2013, securing finishes of 11th, 10th, 15th, 14th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 14th, 12th and 11th in the table. However, one top-half finish in that period and a subsequent inability to push on and challenge for Europe has begun to grate.
During Palace’s spell in the top-flight, the following clubs have secured top-seven finishes: Southampton (twice), West Ham (three times), Leicester (three times), Everton, Burnley, Wolves (twice), Brighton and Aston Villa. It is worth noting that some of those clubs have since dropped into the Championship.
“We would absolutely love just one season in Europe,” Matt Watts, co-host of the Team Called Palace podcast tells i.
“There are other teams that are spending lots of money, are very ambitious and want to get in the top 10 and into Europe and it feels as though there is us just sitting there waiting to be relegated.
“We’re probably one of the biggest clubs in England that hasn’t won a single piece of silverware so that’s definitely something that we want to tick off.
“Ultimately, as Crystal Palace fans we don’t want to be told that being safe in the Premier League is an achievement and that we should be really happy with that. We want to be a bit more ambitious and have that feeling that we’re striving for better.”
Chris Windsor, from the Five Year Plan fanzine, agrees: “Yes Palace fans are grateful for the fact that we are still in the Premier League, but if you’ve been in a league for 10 years and your mantra is to just keep surviving you’re going to drive fans away.
“If you look at teams around us. West Ham for example got promoted at a similar time and they’ve gone on and won a European trophy. Our arch-nemesis Brighton have invested well and gone into Europe. Villa have come up and spent more than us but invested well. I even remember Burnley qualifying for Europe while we’ve been in the Premier League and they’ve been relegated and promoted again.
“The fans almost need to keep the board and team honest and say well why aren’t you at the level of Brighton or West Ham? We’re in a perfect catchment area in south London, we’ve attracted really good players like Olise, Eze, [Marc] Guehi, [Joachim] Andersen, [Adam] Wharton now who everyone’s raving about. So I think it’s right for the fans to challenge that.”
Time for Parish to go?
Steve Parish, the club’s long-serving chairman, has naturally become a target of supporters’ ire.
“As a Palace fan I feel quite safe with Steve Parish at the helm because I know that he’s a Palace fan, he’s a savvy businessman and ultimately he has the club’s best interest at heart,” Watts says.
“But obviously when things aren’t going well on the pitch people want change and I think they look at other clubs who have had wealthy people come in and take them to the next level and are thinking why can’t that be us?
“We are at a point where quite a few fans would like to see him go and see someone come in with fresh ideas. Someone potentially a bit more ambitious.”
Parish is the most visible chairman in the Premier League, regularly appearing on radio and TV stations to discuss issues affecting Palace and the wider game.
In 2021, he spoke to Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher on Monday Night Football about the foiled Super League plot and in November, he was a guest on The Rest Is Football podcast to discuss the possible benefits of salary caps, the varied threats to the football pyramid and possible solutions to VAR in its current guise.
But according to Windsor, the normally public-facing Parish has stopped communicating directly with Palace supporters which has exacerbated the rift.
“He’s probably the only chairman you hear from on a regular basis but he’s gone quiet,” he says. “I think if Palace fans were communicated with better a lot of this would go away or there would at least be more understanding.
“When you’re used to your chairman tweeting after every victory, doing newspaper columns, being on radio and then you don’t hear from him for three or four months… that silence needs filling.”
Parish’s fractured relationship with Palace’s American investors, including John Textor, is another issue.
“You get the impression that Textor and Parish aren’t on speaking terms,” Watts says.
“There’s been a few things where Textor hasn’t really been happy like the Premier League vote on sharing players with sister clubs on loan. Parish voted against it. Textor wasn’t consulted on it and didn’t understand why Parish would vote against it when it could potentially be beneficial for Palace. That’s all kind of rumbling on in the background.
“It’s not beneficial for the club and I do feel as though some of the problems that we’ve had on the pitch in recent weeks do stem from off-the-pitch stuff.”
Hodgson has ‘overstayed his welcome’
Parish’s decision to appoint Roy Hodgson on a one-year contract last summer, two years after allowing him to leave, has also been called into question.
When Hodgson departed at the end of the 2020-21 season it was meant to herald an exciting new era for Palace. Patrick Vieira was appointed as manager, exciting signings like Olise, Marc Guehi and Joachim Andersen were made and a more progressive style of play was ushered in.
However, when results began to deteriorate under Vieira last season, Hodgson was reappointed, initially on an interim basis before agreeing to stay permanently. He initially oversaw a dramatic improvement in results and performances, dragging Palace away from relegation trouble and up to 11th, but that hasn’t carried over into 2023-24.
Palace fans also believe that he was the “cheap option”.
“There isn’t a clear philosophy or strategy,” Watt says. “When they made the change to Patrick Vieira it looked as though we did have a philosophy and wanted to play front foot football with young, exciting players but going back to Roy means that has gone out of the window.
“Unfortunately with Roy when he left the first time we were ready for him to leave then. In an ideal world he would have sailed off into the sunset at the end of last season and then we could have kicked on this year. Obviously they didn’t do that and unfortunately it just feels as though he’s overstayed his welcome.
“We’ve always been told that he’s a safe pair of hands, that he’ll get you organised defensively. That hasn’t been the case recently.
“We’ve conceded 11 goals in our last three games. When you’re not actually getting that defensive solidity you do look at it and think what is Roy actually bringing to the table?”
Hodgson’s limited use of young players and criticism of two of them – academy graduate Jesurun Rak-Sakyi and summer signing Matheus Franca – after a 2-1 defeat to Spurs in October ruffled some feathers.
Palace fans voted Rak-Sakyi their player of the month in response, despite the fact he had only played 124 minutes of league football. He hasn’t been seen in the league since.
“Under Vieira we brought in a young lad [Naouirou] Ahamada who has not started a Premier League game. We spent £10m on him,” says Windsor.
“We spent £20m on Matheus Franca, he’s only started once and that was an FA Cup game against Everton.
“Roy has kind of backed his old guard, players he worked with previously and they haven’t delivered. And fans are thinking if we are going to lose 5-0 to Arsenal, we’d rather see some players who can get us off our seat.”
Hodgson’s accusation that Palace fans “have been spoiled” after they watched their team lose 2-0 at home to Bournemouth in December, also went down badly.
“We got played off the park,” Windsor recalls. “When the second goal went in the ground was half empty.”
For some fans, Hodgson’s decision to bring on Michael Olise at half-time against Brighton – when Palace were already 3-0 down – only for the winger to come off again eight minutes later with a recurrence of a hamstring injury, was the final straw. Olise, who has missed most of this season due to injury, is expected to be unavailable for another two months.
“I know Hodgson said that the medical team cleared him to play for 45 minutes but there are elements of the fanbase that think he was doing it almost to save his own skin,” Watts says.
Although the mutinous reaction at Brighton might have seemed like a natural end point to the second Hodgson era, fans i spoke to believe that the Bournemouth game was the turning point.
“Don’t get me wrong I think Roy should go, I think he should have gone a few weeks ago,” Watts says. “I’m concerned that if the Chelsea game on Monday night doesn’t go well I think the atmosphere is going to be toxic.
“I’m not particularly happy about the way this season has gone and with some of the things that he has said or done but that being said I still don’t want to see him being hounded out of a football club that he loves and has done so much for.”
Windsor adds: “I wouldn’t want to be in Parish’s shoes because I think if it had been any other manager they would have been sacked by now and Roy would have got the call! The fact that it is Roy that’s on the verge of the sack means there’s not a parachute safety blanket you can go to.”
What comes next?
Former Brighton boss Graham Potter has been mooted as a long-term target, as has Steve Cooper, newly available after being sacked by Nottingham Forest. Kieran McKenna, who has done an exceptional job at Ipswich Town, is also believed to be on the club’s shortlist.
Whether any of them would be willing to join Palace now with relegation a possibility and Eze, Olise, Guehi and Cheick Doucoure all currently out injured, is another matter.
There is a reasonable chance Palace will survive. Everton have been docked 10 points, Nottingham Forest are at risk of their own deductions. Burnley and Sheffield United look consigned to their fate.
Even if they stay up, Palace fans want big changes this summer. So what do they want a Crystal Palace side to look like?
“I always take it back to the FA Cup quarter-final against Everton in 2022,” says Watts. “We beat them 4-0 and we had a young side, they were incredibly ambitious, they were brave, they took the game to the opposition.
“I think when you look at the area and the DNA of the football club it’s about excitement and trying to punch above your weight and aspire to be more than you currently are. I just feel as though when I look at the current team I don’t see those things.”
“We’ve always been enjoyable when we’ve had two wingers or players on the pitch that get you off your seat. We had it with Zaha and Bolasie when we got promoted from the Championship and now with Eze and Olise,” adds Windsor. “We want to be entertained.”
“I’m realistic enough to know that we’re probably going to lose more games than we win in the Premier League but you want a team that entertains you, like we had at the back end of last season.
“I personally don’t agree with all of the points [of the protests], but where is the shared vision? Where is the club going? If you’re asking people to pay Premier League prices to watch not necessarily Premier League football they’ve got every right to question what they’re spending their money on.”
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