If I was a betting man I would suggest that DF has been to Belgium, France & Brazil quite a few times in the last 6 months - Would be nice (if from one of those trips) he could pull a midfield rabbit out of the hat sometime this month, although I feel that if he was going to do so we would have seen the player by now -

Agreed,the PV. experiment, will deemed to have failed if we lose yet again tomorrow.Chelsea are in chaos under Potter and we must and should win tomorrow.Otherwise,we need a change of manager to urgently address our slide it we are to stay in this leag.

PalaceDevon sums it up well. As I previously mentioned, Vieira only played in teams where he was surrounded with other top quality players. With those personnel you can play an expansive passing game. His vision of how the game should be played is influenced by that and that’s great and commendable. But Palace simply do not have enough of that quality of players, now in the past and for the foreseeable future. This led previous managers like Pulis, Allardyce and Hodgson, who all had previous experience of successful relegation battles to take a more pragmatic approach. It might not be as entertaining, but it is effective.

Pulis massively improving set play outcomes, big Sam’s mantra of ‘respect the point’ being examples of that approach. Personally I don’t mind the tactics being a bit boring if the outcome is a win. Remember the ‘boring, boring’ Arsenal chant when they kept churning out 1-0 wins and league championships and cup wins?

It’s all very well being entertaining, but when you lose 4-5 to Swansea away, as we did under Pardew, then it becomes a bit of a waste of time. Speaking of Swansea, I remember our chairman extolling their virtues a few years back, with their passing football and style being something Palace should be aiming towards. Remind me where are Swansea these days? I bet their supporters would happily swap their current situation for staying in the Premier League by adopting a more pragmatic style of football when they had a chance

Dropped out of the EPL after losing top players like Sigurdsson and Michu.

Edited by Booted Eagle (14 Jan 2023 12.40pm)

“ [T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know. ”
—United States Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

I think what's galling is when we stop even trying to compete, particularly against the likes of Fulham, Southampton, Forest, Leicester....

Palace since 19 August 1972. Palace 1 (Tony Taylor) Liverpool 1 (Emlyn Hughes)

I personally think there are players in the lower leagues with good engines and tenacity. After all they play far more football than we do in the PL. it’s down to Dougie to go sort it. We need an enforcer or two, that is his job to find them.

Take the pressure off Doucoure and Eze and we should flourish where we are currently struggling.