The late transfer business is an issue as players such as Ayew and Meyer have spoken about not having a proper preseason and so not being ready. Also, it does seem we have missed out on targets due to leaving it too late (if the media is to be believed). Parish has also spoken before about enjoying the rush of deadline day, but I'm not convinced it's really worked in our favour. Eze signed early, had a proper preseason, was ready to go.

Incompetence or not, the later the new manager comes in the less time he has to prepare. That's just a fact. How much the delay is down to the club and a lack of succession planning and how much is just the nature of the game it is hard to tell without being a fly on the wall. As it stands we're all clueless and who's to say whether someone's opinion is valid or not. For all we know Parish and Dougie are playing rock, paper, scissors to make their decision. Personally I think they were swayed by the attraction of Nuno, Mendes screwed us and now the club have had to step back and look at the drawing board again. Frustrating, but certainly better than panicking and offering the job to any old hack.

That's my point entirely. There isn't a club or manager in the world who wouldn't want their squad and staff 'complete' for day one of pre-season, but yet so few can ever achieve it. Personally, I'd say that fact must tell us something about how it works and that the issue is not unique to Palace, though the main point is that not having the squad/manager in place for pre-season cannot be cited as evidence of 'failure' unless someone can show that Parish or Freedman ignored their jobs and went on holiday/the piss instead.

Which I doubt.

There have been complaints in the past that Parish has pushed off on holiday during the transfer windows (including January) and his excuse is that he has a phone so is always in touch

Hes an absolute crack pot,

I can only repeat the point. You are presuming that Palace are being indecisive, but none of us know that that at all.

Palace might have made bids for players on day one of the window, but the selling club held off until the last day to try and get an auction going. Or, Palace might have decided to wait until the last day to approach clubs who hadn't got bids they were happy with, but who need to sell - I can understand Parish hoping to get the selling club when they are desperate, driving down the price of a player so that our money can be made to go further, or giving us a shot at one we couldn't normally get otherwise. Or, maybe Palace have found that they have to wait for players to have bigger, better moves not materialise before we become a viable option.

Until such time as they publish a history of bids, rejections, counter bids, alternative offers, who said what to who and when etc, any criticism of Palace for doing things late is based on nothing more than a presumption. Quite why so many are prepared to criticise the running of something when not in a position of sufficient knowledge is a mystery to me.

Edited by TheBigToePunt (15 Jun 2021 5.47pm)

Well the Roy Out brigade got their way. I hope they are happy now.

Conjunctivitis.com - A site for sore eyes.