Improbable numbers hint at deep problems at Crystal Palace and reflect badly on Alan Pardew

A spectacular collapse in stoppage time to lose at Swansea City has only intensfied the pressure on misfiring Crystal Palace and their underfire manager, writes Richard Jolly.

Alan Pardew saw his Crystal Palace side lose 5-4 to Swansea City at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday, November 26, 2016. Peter Cziborra / Reuters

He is a popular Crystal Palace player of the 1990s. He spent several seasons in charge of a north-east club and is set to be appointed England manager. Not, as Alan Pardew may long have thought, him, but Gareth Southgate.

For the increasingly beleaguered Pardew, meanwhile, it is a question of how long he has a job of any variety. Only six clubs claimed more top-flight points than Palace, who accumulated 63, in 2015. None of the 90 clubs who have spent the whole of 2016 in the Premier or Football Leagues have fewer than their 22.

Acquired at an average of 0.69 per game, it has the feel of relegation form even before Saturday’s capitulation at Swansea City, when a 4-3 win became a 5-4 defeat, is factored in.

The proof of the difference a year has made also illustrates a trait of Pardew’s teams. Even 1920s economies experienced less boom and bust than him. His sides can veer from highs to lows, sometimes without warning. It means there is a danger in writing him off: at Newcastle United in 2014, for instance, he went from winning once in 15 games to five in a row. Yet dismissal of a different type beckons without another dramatic upturn.

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He is surrounded by improbable numbers that hint at deeper problems. Palace have gone 18 games without a clean sheet, conceding 26 goals this season, 13 of them from set pieces. On Friday, he identified the threat of Gylfi Sigurdsson, noting the influential Icelander had contributed to 53 per cent of Swansea’s goals. By Saturday evening, that figure was down to 50 per cent. Yet Sigurdsson had still recorded another goal and another assist. It was just that Swansea had scored three times in other fashion.

Both the self-destructive streak and the inability to drill a defence look damning. Palace have conceded costly late goals in their last three matches. They have not been thrashed this season, but that serves to highlight that this is a squad that should be doing better. They are not outclassed, but they are unable to turn some elements of a performance into a result.

There is the sense that Pardew has reached the stage where his decisions backfire and where everything is interpreted personally. When he took Christian Benteke off against Manchester City, it led indirectly to Yaya Toure’s winner. When he had to make a defensive change as Tottenham Hotspur had a corner in August, Victor Wanyama scored the decider in the subsequent confusion. He can talk of errors and isolated incidents, but they add up in a manner that reflects badly on him.

Palace are a team with latent potential, which often encourages owners – and two American investors, Josh Harris and David Blitzer, who lack chairman Steve Parish’s long relationship with Pardew, have joined the board – to make a change.

Andros Townsend, one of his flagship summer signings, has been in and out of the team, substitute and substituted. Yohan Cabaye, last year’s marquee acquisition and the man he made the best-paid player in Palace’s history, has had a negligible impact, his class seen too rarely. Benteke, the £27 million (Dh123.2m) club record buy, is supposed to represent a one-man guarantee against relegation. He has delivered five goals but Palace are still perched perilously close to the drop zone, largely because of their propensity to concede.

The suggestions are that he has two games to save his job. The danger is that minds could be made up sooner, both among a fan base who think Pardew reaches for excuses and refuses to accept responsibility too often and in a boardroom where the costs of demotion are well known.

In 2007, West Ham United fired him and stayed up. When he left Newcastle in 2015, they made two poor appointments and went down 16 months later. He is an advertisement for dismissing a manager and for keeping one. If history makes Palace’s decision harder, Pardew’s declining fortunes could soon simplify it.

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