I remember in our second season in the prem, when others were saying that we should be pushing for the top ten that year, that I thought 4 seasons was a reasonable amount of time to get established in the premier league. We are now in our sixth season and it is the same story year after year after year; relegation battle, players performing poorly, managers who have a little success but cannot sustain it.

Look at this season: The manager is not brand new which is good, and therefore the pre-season could be exactly what he wanted, the players seem like they all have some ability and we even have a few to spare so an ok squad. We even have one of the best players outside the top 4 playing for us. Yet we average 1 point a game after a fairly tame fixture list and have lost to Watford, Southampton and Bournemouth. In the 2 games we won, the opponents were both pretty profligate so that could easily have been different. This is a familiar story, so why isn’t this improving year on year? What is the club not doing that it should?

We are lucky that Huddersfield and Cardiff are so poor as that’s 2 of the relegation places filled already, but someone still needs to fill the third and those 2 could of course miraculously improve. If not there’s still next season to worry about if we scrape through again this season.

Why aren’t we improving? Is it too hard to do? Do we have simply the wrong players and manager to do well? Is our failure to get a decent striker and/or improve the defence what’s costing us?

What does everyone else think?

You'll be forever in my family's memories and it was an honor and privilege to play and lead in the red and blue
Yours sincerely
Mile Jedinak

still not so sure about Burnley, could still struggle this season.

"It was a Team effort, I guess it took all players working together to lose this one"

You're taking a very narrow view of progress. Although the striker situation gets more unforgivable each year, the squad we have now should stay in this division with any decent manager at the helm.

Our performances have been very underwhelming so far this season, but we'll muddle through without being relegation-threatened for sure, and that will be progress - the first PL season where we're not fighting for our lives at some point. Of course it's frustrating that we can't just pick up the momentum from our great escapes and carry on the next season, but for whatever reason, that's not how it works.

I admire your ‘half-full’ outlook, but come on; we’ve been pony this season, with no sign of any improvement to come. It baffles me.

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

Thats What I thought before the Season started, it's looking like were gonna be closer to the relegation zone that I'd hoped.
Still, early days yet

"It was a Team effort, I guess it took all players working together to lose this one"

We seem to make a lot of costly individual errors but - no one can legislate for a £30m striker suddenly not scoring for the thick end of a year albeit he should have been outed regardless of the loss.
With a decent Centre Forward we would be in this pickle.
We are bemoaning Ward and Sakho missing gilt edged chances but in reality we are having a go at two defenders missing the target - where were our forwards and midfielders is what bothers me more!
Another worry is the purchase/loans of Ayew, Koyoute and the like - middle of the road players who won't make us better.
They take the place of Cabaye and RLC - no contest in that they are inferior players.
I accept they are better than the Puncheons of this world butI would prefer to bring youth through to be honest and have a proper spend up on fewer players.
As someone else posted yesterday we are going down again - it is just a question of which season - true - unless we get a couple of better players in and soon and I hate to say it but we need to sell Wilf to do it.
Last night showed that the lesser teams will crowd him out now and so he is less effective and suddenly we can't rely on him and there is no Plan B. If he is marked by two then don't give him the ball I guess - use it elsewhere.
Against the better teams he will get more space hopefully.
We should get out of it this time but January will be very important for us and the Summer even more so.
Still - it's going to be another hard season - it's never dull with CPFC!