Sam Allardyce will consider Crystal Palace an opportunity. Alan Pardew did too, even if it was one he ultimately failed to grasp. But the brief assessment delivered by the prospective new manager as he arrived at the club’s Beckenham training ground on Friday was less an attempt to butter up the co-owners and more an expression of enthusiasm. “Fantastic, fantastic,” he said through the open window of his 4x4, before edging the car on towards a final round of talks and a signing on the dotted line.
This team have drowned in gloomy statistics of late, saddled by constant reminders of shoddy form through the calendar year or vulnerability at set pieces, and now forever fearful that a single defeat is to prove the prelude to another prolonged succession of them. Allardyce may not spy it on the training ground, where the mood among the troops has always been relatively upbeat, but he will quickly discover that in-game confidence is brittle. Theirs is a collective frustration. The team know they are better than 17th in the Premier League. They are not a side who should be losing eight games out of 10 or 22 since the turn of the year. That tally suggests deep-rooted problems but, more than anything, they are guilty of underachievement which, in truth, is more infuriating than being truly out of their depth.
This is not the imbalanced, bloated mess of a squad gripped by self-doubt that was inherited by Tony Pulis in the autumn of 2013. It is not even the rather dissatisfied and disgruntled side who had been sleepwalking towards the relegation zone under Neil Warnock a year later. This is a team who can lean on the boundless energy and no little quality provided by Jason Puncheon and James McArthur in midfield or on the effervescence and incision of Wilfried Zaha on the flank. They have a £27m striker in Christian Benteke, who had Antonio Conte drooling in admiration on Saturday, urging his three centre-halves not to retreat too deep after witnessing one chest, spin and volley, and who has scored eight goals this season. There are few better to lead the line in the country.
Even at the back, where Palace have been so porous, there is a centre-half in Scott Dann who has long been touted, not unrealistically, as a potential England defender and who has been consistently outstanding in previous seasons. His defensive partner, Damien Delaney, has become a stalwart at this club, a player whom some managers might find abrasive but whose whole-hearted commitment can rarely be doubted. That represents a more than competent spine even before players such as Andros Townsend or Yohan Cabaye, James Tomkins or Joe Ledley, are taken into account.
Allardyce will survey the names and, although he will look to add to the team’s defensive ranks where the chance to sign more cover was passed up over the summer, he may wonder quite how this opportunity has come his way at all. Even the training ground, revamped by Pardew, whose two white budgerigars were still fluttering in a cage in the canteen on Friday, is almost pristine. “We’re actually in quite a good place,” the coach-turned-caretaker, Keith Millen, said. “Obviously not in terms of our league position but certainly when it comes to the players, their attitude and their quality.”
Millen had nominally been Pardew’s defensive coach, charged with analysing players’ roles when repelling corners or free‑kicks. His neck would normally be on the block given just how many times Palace have wilted at set plays this season. One need only recall the chaos at the Liberty Stadium last month, when the visitors may as well have sported blindfolds every time Gylfi Sigurdsson delivered a dead‑ball into the box.
But the desire to reinvent this team as a possession-based, free-flowing, attack-minded side, channelling the ball through Cabaye’s tidy touches in midfield, had long since blurred the focus on defensive duties and diminished the emphasis placed on the basics Millen was charged with overseeing. Steve Parish, the chairman had suggested as much when confirming Pardew’s departure. “We all bought into the decision to play a more expansive style,” he said. “Now we’re going to wind the dial back the other way.” They need to recall the skills at which they were once so competent.
There had been grumbling behind the scenes this term. Players complained privately about how all the detailed analysis conducted by Pardew and his staff was relayed to the squad, bemoaning too much information and too little explanation. They found it confusing at times. Some craved more focused, traditional work on defensive shape or basic organisation. Many in their number recognised it had been such constant drilling that had hoisted them to play at this level in the first place.
Allardyce the organiser should represent a return to normality. That, after all, is his great skill. Like Pulis he can implement solidity while leaning on the evidence gleaned from data analysis to pinpoint improvement. As even Pardew admitted, it is far easier to set up a team to keep goals out than plunder them, and it will be from a sound base that this team’s attacking talents are asked to create.
Some on the staff will need reassurance. Townsend has cut a forlorn figure of late, with Zeki Fryers, the back-up left-back, even put on in his stead at times. He is capable of so much more than the flashes of skill he offered in the autumn and Palace, even in the money-flushed modern‑day Premier League, are not a club who can afford £13m players to sink without trace. But the tools are already in place for the new man to flourish. He does not need to instigate a complete overhaul of the playing staff. He indicated as much in the detailed dossier submitted on his behalf to Palace’s American co-owners last month. Tweaks should suffice for now, even if a quick-fix arrival can still set one back eight figures.
Josh Harris and David Blitzer, their faith in analytics entrenched, will be comfortable working with a manager who pioneered the use of ProZone at Bolton more than a decade ago and whose analysis of the Palace squad had pinpointed apparent fitness issues – not least to explain the number of late goals conceded – as well as each player’s strengths and weaknesses. There may be some pragmatism to come but the co-owners will accept that if it protects their £50m investment. Allardyce will just be happy to be back in the Premier League after the dismal anticlimax of his 67-day tenure with England. All sides should consider this a chance to put things right.
