After a remarkable transformation in fortunes under Oliver Glasner at the back end of last season, Crystal Palace fans were dreaming of a fast start to 2024-25 and possible European qualification this time around.
Yet with three games played, there has been a reassessment.
Palace’s opening two matches saw them beaten 2-1 at Brentford and lose 2-0 at home to West Ham United. Despite securing a 1-1 draw against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in their third fixture, Palace were on the ropes for the opening 45 minutes that day, tormented by through balls down the left channel.
Overall, it has been a slow, slightly sluggish start to the season. Not alarmingly so — there have been enough positive signs to not be too concerned — but slow enough to temper the optimism created by last season’s run-in.
Some may point to mitigating factors. Palace had nine players away on international duty over the summer. They also sold their star forward, Michael Olise, to Bayern Munich, and his fellow first-team regulars Joachim Andersen (to Fulham), Jordan Ayew and Odsonne Edouard (both to Leicester City) departed too. Newcastle United’s pursuit of Marc Guehi, while ultimately unsuccessful, was also unsettling.
Manager Glasner, however, is not one to indulge in such excuses. Instead, he made the point other clubs have had to contend with players being away at major tournaments this summer too, and he explicitly stated that his side should have performed better in those opening two games.
It is not the first time Palace seem to have suffered inertia during his six-month reign. The run of seven unbeaten matches at the end of last season, in which they blew away opponents with swashbuckling football, has made everyone forget what came before it: one win from his six opening games as Roy Hodgson’s replacement.
In that spell, Palace did not look especially convincing. The most concerning of their performances came in the 1-0 defeat by Bournemouth on April 2. In a 4-2 defeat by Manchester City a week later, Palace were significantly improved, despite the result. Then the 1-0 win against Liverpool at Anfield on April 14 began a run of six wins from the final seven games. Everything clicked.
In his first press conference after being appointed, Glasner talked about it taking time to get a team playing as he wishes: “One of my biggest strengths and weaknesses is my impatience. So I hope it will be fast.” He said he was “not a magician” and would not transform everything overnight.
“Every manager has his ideas and the players have to deal with it. It is not that you click your fingers and the next day (everything runs like clockwork) as that would be easy for us. It is daily work. I want to improve every parameter and details, be physically stronger, create more, concede less, score more after set plays.
“I can’t say (it will be) in three weeks. My experience is that when we can really see it gets better and better, and it is in the mind of the players, it takes up to three months at past clubs. Of my first eight games in Frankfurt (managing previous club Eintracht), there were five draws and three losses. Then the journey started, I hope we start better here.”
Glasner with the Europa League trophy his Frankfurt side won in 2022 (Sebastian Gollnow/AFP/Getty Images)
But the Austrian has previous when it comes to his teams starting campaigns slowly.
As he referred to above, in his opening 10 Bundesliga games in his first season as manager of Frankfurt in 2021-22, Glasner’s team won just once. They also went out of the DFB-Pokal in the first round via defeat to third-tier Waldhof Mannheim.
In the 2022-23 season, he fared better: a defeat followed by two draws before his team achieved a victory.
At Wolfsburg in 2020-21, his side began their Bundesliga campaign with four draws before winning their fifth match.
During that slow start three years ago, questions were asked of Glasner. Everything was analysed, from the way he dressed and how he looked to the style of play. Yet those doubts were banished with six league wins from seven in November and December, and by the end of the season, Frankfurt had won the Europa League.
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So how does this help us with trying to understand Palace’s start to this season?
Before that draw with Chelsea on September 1, Glasner said he was “surprised everything worked so quickly” after his arrival as manager in February. “Now we need to find the best setup for every player, to come together and build everything again. I can’t say it (will be) two weeks or four weeks.”
Clearly, this is a manager indicating he is still building a team; that his players are still becoming accustomed to his system, his style, his focus on analytics, his mathematical side, which he uses to induce more from his players, and to the hefty physical demands of aggressive pressing, including learning the triggers for when to do so.
This summer saw the arrival of seven new players, four of whom — Matt Turner, Maxence Lacroix, Trevoh Chalobah and Eddie Nketiah — signed on transfer deadline day just over a week ago. Those new players have only had days so far to try and understand Glasner, and more importantly understand what he wants from them. Nketiah and Lacroix, the latter played for Glasner at Wolfsburg, featured alongside other first-team players in a 3-0 victory against third-tier Reading behind closed doors last Thursday as the coaching staff looked to integrate them into the group. Striker Nketiah scored twice.
Even so, that sudden late rush of arrivals was far from ideal. Others in the squad did not return until the week before the opening game against Brentford on August 18 following their post-tournament holidays. Like Glasner’s teams before Palace, particularly Frankfurt in 2021-22, there are summer adjustments that take time to pick up, but the patterns from his past suggest that momentum will come at some point in the season.
Palace were much improved in the second half against Chelsea, though it may still be some time before everything truly clicks into place. That is why this first international break of the new season has come at a good time — to give those who are not on duty with their country time to get to know their manager.
An absence of radical improvement over the next few games should not be cause for alarm. Glasner’s history suggests things take time.
Integration into a system that is physically and tactically demanding will not be seamless.
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(Top photo: Justin Setterfield via Getty Images)
