To lose one manager before the start of the season may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose a second before the first home game looks like carelessness. In Crystal Palace’s case, however, it appears rather worse.
They have lost undisputedly their finest Premier League manager in Tony Pulis. They have lost their opening league game of the season. They have lost their sporting director, Iain Moody. They are losing ground as the minutes tick down to the closure of the transfer window.
It is an almighty mess. A success story rarely becomes a farce at such speed. It is certainly not all Palace’s fault: they find themselves spurned by a manager lacking a sense of perspective, caught up in the fallout of a bitter row at Cardiff City and squeezed by the proximity of the artificial cut-off date that is deadline day.
Yet the breakdown in relations between Pulis and co-chairman Steve Parish feels still more damaging. Palace’s Premier League record, spread across five seasons, shows they take 1.46 points per game under Pulis and 0.97 under everyone else; that extra point every two games is the difference between mid-table security and probable demotion.
Last season, he inherited a team that was seemingly doomed, lifted them to 11th place and was voted the division’s manager of the year. Pulis exerted a transformative effect on limited players and wanted to upgrade his squad and see what he could do with greater talents.
Parish, conscious Palace were in administration as recently as 2010 (and, perhaps, that Pulis never took Stoke City above 11th, despite spending rather more) was keener not to jeopardise the club’s financial future. For 13 clubs, it is a question which is the greater gamble: to spend or not to spend, thus potentially losing the Premier League millions?
Whatever the correct answer, Palace were endangered by Pulis’ exit. The Welshman’s timing, walking out 48 hours before the season started, should diminish his reputation. At a stroke, he undid much of his good work at Selhurst Park.
But it seemed Malky Mackay, another manager to emphasise teamwork and organisation, could slot seamlessly in, reuniting with his Cardiff colleague Moody, named Palace’s sporting director in December last year.
Then, just as Mackay appeared on the brink on being appointed, came a sudden volte-face. Rather than gaining a manager, Palace have lost managerial team. The suggestions that Cardiff submitted a dossier of allegedly racist, sexist and homophobic emails and text messages involving Mackay and Moody during their time in Wales were, whether true or not, sufficiently serious that Palace withdrew interest in Mackay and, on Thursday, saw Moody resign.
Having lost the man charged with negotiating their transfers, Palace are in a precarious position, with no manager, no idea how and where to strengthen a slim squad.
The major criterion for Pulis’ successor was a Premier League pedigree. That nevertheless produced very different candidates: Glenn Hoddle, the 3-5-2 advocate who has been out of management for eight years, ruled himself out.
Tim Sherwood, whose gung-ho approach at Tottenham Hotspur contrasted with Pulis’ more pragmatic plans at Palace, now seems the favourite for the job by default. Available, interested, (slightly) experienced and not at the centre of a firestorm, he looks the last man standing.
Sherwood is also utterly untried in the transfer market – Tottenham did not sign during his brief spell in charge – and his only taste of management did not encompass the relegation battle that Palace, deprived of Pulis’ services, are likely to face.
And so, for the second successive August, Palace look in a state of flux when stability would be preferable. They went on to make five signings in the last 72 hours of the transfer window 12 months ago, only one of whom, Adrian Mariappa, was even a qualified success.
The scattergun approach yielded just three points from the first 10 games before, after Ian Holloway resigned, Pulis rode to the rescue. Yet they prospered in spite of chaos theory, not because of it. The past provides a warning, not encouragement.
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