This quote from the article scares me:

"But successive one-year plans to stay in the division have an expiry date, and given the first-team squad’s age profile, it’s rapidly approaching."

I think of Stoke and Bournemouth being two teams that we envied as stable in past years. We have no young players contributing this year, for whatever reason.

2017 Feb. (Van Aanholt) Palace 1 - 0 Middlesboro
2018 Jan. (Sako) Palace 1 - 0 Burnley
2019 May (Batshuayi, Batshuayi, OG, Van Aanholt, Townsend) Palace 5 - 3 Bournemouth
2020 Feb. (Van Aanholt) Palace 1 - 0 Newcastle

If that £20 million is anywhere near accurate it’s a sobering thought.
Perhaps we’re betting sticking with the Cahills and Ayews of this world!
We may be better off spending money on poaching Brentford’s scouting department.
They manage to turn up gems from all sorts of unlikely places.
Back to Meyer - I wonder what sort of a fee he will command if he leaves in the summer?
He’s never going to really feature under Hodgson, but in fairness he has not set the world alight in his limited opportunities - all though mostly in positions which don’t allow him to demonstrate his neat passing skills.

I remember seeing a young Trevor Francis play passes only for his team mates to stare in befuddlement. It took time in the team for them all to be on the same wavelength.

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

The two options are then

1) Give Roy no more money, let the club save for a predecessor in a years time.
2) Give Roy cash, let him have some money to second guess the kind of squad his successor might want.
3) Sack Roy at the end of the season. Give his successor the truncated off season to prepare for the start of next season.
4) Sack Roy now, give his successor a few weeks at the end of this season to assess the players he wants to keep, and the summer to bring in new players.

On a side note - the gap between seasons is likely to be short in order to finish next season in time for the Euro's. We can expect a whole year of games coming think and fast. Not helpful for an ageing team. More reason to give the frindge players a lot of minutes until the end of this season.

Zaha should be sold, replaced with a player that will compliment a midfield system that promotes Meyer. He has to be be built around and given a season run out.

We also need to replace Ward with a young right back.

We need to sell Sakho. We need to blood in a youth defender... Tomkins, Cahill, Dan, Kelly are more than enough at CB.

We need to sell Benteke and cut out losses regardless with him... or, make it work where he plays and has Meyer in the midfield too...

Either way, this summer we need to change a stale environment.

This was once a quality forum....

That's 4 options !

As I said, the squad needs a rebuild of sorts but that's not going to happen in 1 window, so it's feasible that Roy starts that process but may not finish it.

If / when we complete he signing of Nathan Ferguson, I see that as the start of the process. We are also being linked ( I know ) with a number of players all of which are younger than those we currently have.

Now would be the time to give fringe players some opportunities given the Europe pipe dream is over and relegation not a threat, but he aren't blessed with too many of them in truth. I'd certainly like to see what young Mitchell can do at left back.

Old, Ungifted and White