When the new main stand at Selhurst Park is completed in 2027, nine years after it was first proposed, perhaps Crystal Palace’s new unofficial motto can be engraved into the seats: “The more things change, the more they stay the same”.
The first fortnight of the new season was supposed to present a blueprint for a European push, an opportunity to finally escape a decade-long stay in the comforting clutches of upper-midtable.
Seven unbeaten matches under Oliver Glasner to end 2023-24, including a 4-0 win over Manchester United and a 5-0 final day victory over Aston Villa, had freed a long-caged hope at Selhurst Park which rapidly morphed into rampant optimism. Au revoir ennui, bonjour Thursday nights in Monaco and Marseille.
But two weeks, two Premier League defeats and no notable incomings later, reality has descended.
Despite chairman Steve Parish saying he couldn’t imagine a world in which Joachim Andersen and Marc Guehi both left, one is going and the other has gone.
Michael Olise’s £50m departure to Bayern Munich was expected, but his succession planning has been unconvincing.
Running any football club is an exercise in balancing on-pitch performance with financial stability, but Parish’s priorities have invariably tended towards the latter. Given Palace’s historical tendency to ruin its owners and exist on the precipice of carnage, this is understandable in principle but often grates in practice.
While fans have been largely accepting throughout the club’s 12-year oscillation between 10th and 15th, the great Glasner run of April and May 2024 has provided a sumptuous taste of the good life. Unsurprisingly, they like the good life. Comfortably avoiding relegation and finishing 13th has lost its shine. You can’t unsee what’s behind the curtain.
And so, while there has always been something of a gulf between Parish’s intentions and the fanbase’s desires, that gap is only widening. Potential incomings of £150m mean very different things to the two parties.
“Our transfer market dealings have been disjointed, inconsistent and confused,” says The Palace Way founder Bruno Collingridge. “We’ve now sold our captain and are about to sell his replacement, a partnership which has been the bedrock of our team over the past three seasons.
“We’ve left our business so late we’ve effectively thrown away our first two games in what could have been a European push if we’d acted sensibly in the market.
“The sense is that we’ve waited until the end of the window to push for something that has not yet materialised. We’re nowhere near breaching PSR, so the only reason Palace fans can come back to about this inaction is that we’re saving the money for something.
“But we told ourselves last summer we were saving it for this summer, as we did the summer before that. It’s a lot of hope and broken promises. We now have all this money that we’ve run out of time to spend.”
It’s not as though Palace have simply sold for selling’s sake – Olise was the club’s record departure, soon to be overtaken by Guehi, while £30m for 28-year-old Andersen is just good business. But these major outgoings have not yet been sufficiently replaced, part of a concerning trend.
Wilfried Zaha’s exit was largely taken in good faith, although his rejection of a club-record contract emphasised that he did not believe Palace were progressing quickly enough.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s £45m move to Manchester United was an excellent deal, but it took nearly five years for an adequate replacement to join in Daniel Munoz. Jordan Ayew and James McCarthy were the biggest signings of that 2019 summer.
This difficulty replacing stars is best illustrated by footballing Volvo Joel Ward, consistent and dependable within the obvious limits of his ability. Signed in 2012 to replace outgoing academy product Nathaniel Clyne, he held the starting right-back role until Wan-Bissaka took over in 2018.
After the young prodigy’s departure, the role was Ward’s again. Clyne then returned for free in 2020, but injuries meant Ward never really surrendered the position. 12 years after signing, he still played 25 Premier League games last season. Palace had sold two promising academy right-backs for a combined £50m and ended up with the same man they started with.
And so when Olise left earlier this summer, it wasn’t a great surprise the club chose to replace him in the aggregate with Daichi Kamada – an attacking midfielder with limited capacity to beat a man – and Ismaila Sarr, a physically impressive touchline-prone winger.
Chadi Riad, a 21-year-old centre-back from Real Betis, is what Collingridge calls “a more traditional Palace signing”, but left the Carabao Cup victory over Norwich with possible ligament damage after struggling against West Ham last weekend.
“We’re much weaker than we were last season, which is terrifying because we had no depth last year,” he explains. “If we don’t sign what most people agree should be four players in the next two days, then this window is a failure, we’ve not backed our manager and it was so, so predictable.
“In two weeks we’ve gone from potentially getting European football, even though we’ve lost Olise, to more negative fans even worrying about finishing below 15th. I don’t think that’s a risk, but then I didn’t think it was a risk we wouldn’t replace Olise adequately.”
There’s also concern inside and outside the club about business conducted by teams Palace consider either their equals or lessers. Bournemouth spent £47.5m on Evanilson. Nottingham Forest pulled together £35m for Elliott Anderson. Fulham paid £27m for Emile Smith-Rowe, then topped that to scoop up Andersen from the Eagles’ own backline.
Brighton finished below Palace last season, but have since spent £200m and won their first two league games. West Ham, who finished three points clear of their fellow Londoners in 2023-24 and admittedly have a bigger budget, spent £15m more on Max Kilman alone than Palace have forked out all summer. In fact, only Manchester City have spent less this Premier League window than the Eagles.
Parish’s record signing remains Christian Benteke in 2016, although this could be superseded by a proposed deal for Eddie Nketiah – an odd signing given Jean-Philippe Mateta was among Palace’s best players last season. Wolfsburg’s centre-back Maxence Lacroix is also reportedly set to arrive, but he will come in carrying a foot injury and will likely need time to adapt to the Premier League, as Riad clearly does.
Perhaps the deepest on-field concern is a lack of depth. There is a significant drop-off between the first and second-choice players in every position bar goalkeeper and striker, as highlighted by Glasner using an almost full-strength team against Norwich. Parish is playing dice with the injury gods.
Part of the chairman’s conservatism is likely linked to uncertainty over the club’s ownership. John Textor is still a minority owner with his 45 per cent stake, but he is also the single largest investor.
After his bid to buy the club outright was rejected, he is now in exclusive negotiations to purchase Everton and has filed to take his multi-club ownership group public in the US.
He also owns Olympique Lyonnais in France, Brazil’s Botafogo, RWD Molenbeek in Belgium and FC Florida, all of which have endured regular financial or on-field concerns while part of Eagle Football Group.
“Textor’s bid not being accepted is for the best, despite the animosity towards Parish,” Collingridge explains. “Palace haven’t really seen the benefit of a multi-club system and haven’t really benefitted from John Textor’s involvement.
“There’s been tension between Parish and Textor, who seems more ambitious but less reliable. We’re not interested in an owner we couldn’t guarantee would put us above his other clubs.
“There’s something exciting about the money Textor promises, but there’s also the history we have of understanding false promises.”
As deadline day approaches, supporters believe they have fallen victim to false promises once again. It’s tough to argue money is a concern when fans have watched £85m come in and expect another £70m to follow shortly. Ill-fated loan moves for Luis Sinisterra and Hugo Ekitike rose and fell late on the final day of the summer 2023 window as the club scrabbled for signings.
There was hope this year would be different, but that isn’t in Parish or Palace’s nature. Being risk-averse until inaction becomes a risk in itself has kept them in the Premier League for 12 seasons, the ninth-longest stay of any current club.
And as with any judgement made after two games of a new season, perhaps Palace’s demise has been somewhat overstated. Eberechi Eze, one of the few remaining euphoric footballers, was only denied a potential winner against Brentford due to a refereeing error. Adam Wharton and Cheick Doucoure are among the best young midfield pairings in the world. There is positivity here, just not as much as in May.
A summer of change appears set to leave Palace where they started. Spurning the obvious opportunity for progress feels like a waste, but Parish will argue he is only securing the club’s foundations further. The question now is whether fans are happy to return to security when they’ve seen the Elysian Fields Glasner could guide them to.
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