This season is now showing the emergence of some very clever planning.
Bringing in Patrick Vieira was clearly a master stroke.
Then he brought in his coaching team.

Osian Roberts - first team assistant coach.
Kristian Wilson - first team coach.
Said Aigoun - development coach.
Dean Kiely - goalkeeper coach.

Plus we already had
Dougie Freedman- sporting director.

Between them, these guys look like they are pulling off something really special.

The completion of the Academy is all part of the plan.

Things are looking bright.

Something that's overlooked but been a massive factor in our turnaround and may even just have had some input from Harris and Blitzer is how Palace are run using a very American sports-team business model.

Whatever job title you want to apply to his role, Dougie to all intents and purposes is what in the States they call a General Manager. It's now quite clear he runs the show and the scouting department and squad assembly fall to him. It's also quite clear that while he works with the manager, he's first among equals.

Unlike how teams operated in the old days and some other teams still do even now, the manager doesn't choose and buy his own players. Dougie does the scouting and buying and decides what sort of player is right for the Palace ethos. Yes, the manager can input his own preferences but it's the general manager who has the final decision. That's as it should be, at least in the clear GM business model. And Dougie has been hugely successful in the role. He's put the bullets in the gun, then (along with Parish) found the right marksman (Vieira) to do the shooting using the fully loaded gun he's assembled.

If Dougie's reputation was once diminished in these parts, it shouldn't be any more. As General Managers should be (in the States, they're broadly speaking just as high profile as coaches), he is the foundation stone on which everything this year has been built. And the owners (likely including Harris and Blitzer for the reasons given above) should get a lot of credit for installing a system to run the club that works, using their experience elsewhere to do so. Vieira, a brilliant choice of manager, is really the icing on the cake.

A lot of credit to be handed out at Palace these days. Dougie should be getting the lion's share.

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.

I can understand people getting a bit carried away with the result against Arsenal. The reality is we have only won 27% of our Premier games this season, granted we haven’t lost that many.
It’s next season, that will be the telling season of progress we have made under Vieira and his coaching team. There will be no Gallagher, who is key to the way we are currently playing this season. That is the challenge facing them next season.

To be fair, I don't think it's been overlooked at all. Roy mentioned at least once a week the role that Freedman had, so I think everyone within the club knew he had a big hand in the successful recruitment last summer. I also think we were a bit fortuitous with Vieira as he clearly was not the first choice, but kudos to the club for taking the chance on a manager looking to prove himself rather than panicking and going for a well worn option.

Right now we have every reason to be positive and Dougie definitely deserves praise, but I don't think it can be underestimated just how good our current coaching setup is. A positive sign is that we keep improving, showing that there is a plan. With Roy it always felt that his plan was finite once established, whereas it feels Vieira and his team have more ambitious plans which hopefully the club can help them fulfil.

Yes, but we have moved from lower mid table to upper mid table and the reason for the low win rate is the high draw rate, usually through silly errors mainly early season (save Wilf's comical pen miss) when we were transitioning with a new coaching team and many new squad players.

The likely loss of CG will certainly hurt, and all this talk of Eze being an available replacement is tosh as they are very different players offering a very different service.

That shouldn't happen, and rarely does in the General Manager system. If it works properly, it's the General Manager who is primarily responsible for hiring the manager/coach. Yes, the owner has to approve, but the manager nevertheless is part of the GMs "organisation" and the GM is responsible for choosing him just as he is for choosing the players. When a manager is hired, he has to dovetail with the GMs vision for the squad; not the other way around. If a manager is interviewed who wants to do it "his way" then he doesn't get the job.

I think when Dougie's role was more nascent, what you mentioned inevitably did happen with Roy. But now things have become clearer, I think Vieira accepting the job was probably partly influenced by the fact that he shared Dougie's vision and was happy with his role and responsibility for the squad. Given how many of Dougie's signings (even Mateta) are proving just what a job he's done, my guess is an awful lot of managers will be quite happy to work with him in future.

I feel for Roy. He did a great job with what, in reality, was a transitional squad reaching its sell-by date, something we can see clearly now. It's also now obvious that he was never part of the long-term planning. I wouldn't blame him if seeing where we are today rankles with him a little bit, though he's far too classy to ever say so.

But even Roy's departure shows the degree of competence behind Dougie's thinking and planning. Everything that's happened in the past twelve months has been scripted by us. Even the Wilf conversation, for the first time ever this summer, is no longer a matter of "can we persuade Wilf to stay?' but, rather, now it's "shall we let Wilf go if it suits us to?" And short of a top, top club coming in for him (which they won't), why would he want to leave?

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.