Last week began with a conference celebrating Scotwork’s 50th anniversary and the release of ‘Once Upon a Deal Vol2’, it ended with my football team Crystal Palace winning the FA Cup for the first time in the 129-year history of the competition. Perhaps more importantly it has meant that the club have qualified for the Europa League and are guaranteed a minimum of 8 games, a new experience for the club and let’s not forget the additional revenue!
From a fan’s perspective, this is a wonderful achievement and many of them will relish the opportunity of supporting their club in Europe for the first time. From the perspective of the club’s management of the squad, the soon-to-be started football ground improvement plan and the negotiations that will ensue, it is fraught with uncertainty. Crystal Palace have played in the English Premier League for 13 years and have stabilised as an upwardly mobile mid-table club due to some astute signings with a clear preference of signing the best players from the 2nd tier Championship (yes, I don’t quite understand why it’s called that either). All of whom have developed into international players as a result and one who joined Bayern Munich at the start of this season and has been one of their standout players.
However, this major leap forward is not without potential pitfalls. In the elite clubs, the manager/coach looks after the team and often work alongside a director of football, who is responsible for identifying and signing new players. At Palace, both the coach (Oliver Glasner) and director (Dougie Freedman) have excelled in their respective spheres, however, Freedman is leaving at the end of the season to work for a Saudi tier 2 club and he will be difficult to replace.
The key is how the club builds a strategy that manages to maximise both the long-term interests of the club balanced against the short-term issues associated with the rigours of additional games in next season’s calendar, which will further increase in the likely event that we finish in the top 24 of the 36 teams in the competition. The club’s intend (desired) position will be to keep the squad intact and add another 3-4 players, on the basis that that entry into the Europa League will encourage some or all of our best players to stay. However, in reality it is more than likely that they will lose a couple of players to bigger clubs and will already be scouting players to rebuild the squad. As a negotiator, I can see a scenario where the club allows two to leave (generating profitable revenue) which will serve as club’s limit position. All supposition of course. There is also interest in our manager, who won the Europa League with Eintracht Frankfurt in 2022 and has done a wonderful job of developing the team into arguably the best counter-attacking in the EPL, thankfully recent reports suggest Glasner will stay and there will be issues connected to that around the longer-term project and the associated investment.
Fans will understand both sides of the above equation. Having watched two very high-profile clubs (both of whom Palace beat home and away this season) play in last night’s Europa League final, in truth one of the dullest games in recent memory, they’ll be thinking we can go all the way and I believe we can. However, on the downside, history shows that the drain of extra games resulting in league games moving to Sundays can take its toll on performances as the season draws on.
As Crystal Palace fans often say ‘In Glasner we trust’…
