I’ll attempt to answer this. I think the Prem average when the manager goes from it running well to they can’t get a tune or response out of the players is around 18 months. That would involve 3 transfer windows and about the time a manager can really make the team and quite a bit of the squad his own. Therefore if he can get it fitting together nicely, he can also cause it to come apart at the seams, and that may also include things like bad man management over a long enough period of time that the disgruntlement sets in and spreads. This is English footballers and not the Italian players that graduated with discipline, or they didn’t make it. Think Fabio Capello.

With Palace it’ll have a lot to do with 2 transfer windows during the 8-12 months. Parish and the board will give the manager a first budget that’s competitive and realistic. The 2nd transfer window or maybe next season and possibly 3rd window the manager will receive a budget that’s not competitive enough, risking the Prem status and the manager’s record. If it’s not because the club have to it’ll be because Parish and/or the board have seen the manager do such a good job and decide he can deliver the same again, or less on a smaller budget but enough to scrape by in 17th. Or they’ll think (hope) that there are 3 worse teams than us so 17th based on that every season is achievable, only now the promoted teams are different spending and confident ball playing teams.

Part of these good window followed by bad windows repeats are because of the fire fighting. There is a vicious circle going on and sometimes the manager has experienced the good and bad or experienced just the bad. The club then can’t afford a good window due to FFP or they think (hope) he’ll deliver outstanding work from an imbalanced squad that deserves to be bottom 4-5 all season unless again they over spend in January on the players that were needed to begin with in August.

The management of this, the scouting and planning has been very bad, and some of the football philosophy changes with Pardew and Frank were so naive it’s almost unbelievable. Parish does a great job of fire fighting, up to now, but to begin with the decisions leave us vulnerable, and then the vicious circles begin. The question is, will it send us into a tailspin? Let’s hope not.

Should’ve had a football man say it how it is, but Parish likes acquiescent people desperate for work. Anybody who speaks up leaves. There has to be an understanding and some challenging from both in that relationship but I get the impression that for the reasons above, the managers are wasting their time saying anything once they’ve delivered the first survival. Sometimes Parish will be right to stick to the decisions but a lot of the time the manager will be under pressure because of the previous fire fight or more of them.

Thanks for the long, well explained and thought out reply. I agree with everything you said.

Today Neil Warnock said the club had the chance to sign Virgil van Dijk from Celtic for £6m before he went to Southampton but the chief scout vetoed it because he though the player was too slow. If true this says a lot.