August 27 2024

Oliver Glasner

In the latter stages of the 2023/24 Premier League campaign, Crystal Palace replaced Roy Hodgson with the almost unknown Oliver Glasner, writes Peter Blake.

The 49-year-old former defender hit the ground running and with seven wins from his 15 games, as Palace finished comfortably in tenth place in the table.

There were high hopes for what the Eagles could achieve in the 2024/25 campaign, but obviously at Selhurst Park the fans always have to deal with the financial side of life as the £60million sale of Michael Olise to Bayern Munich looms large.

It sadly overshadows the signings that we have made and the Best Betting Sites Ireland would have given great odds on those departures, and whilst the transfer window remains open odds will remain on incomings and outgoings.

Current feelings have not been helped by the fact that we have opened the new campaign with back-to-back defeats – a 2-1 loss on the opening day to Brentford, and then a 2-0 defeat to West Ham United at the weekend.

Performances themselves in many ways are less of an issue, we just simply have not clicked yet and with a little bit more luck we could have taken something from both games, yet our sales, including the departures of Jordan Ayew and Joachim Andersen have clearly interrupted our flow.

Hopefully our form will turn sooner rather than later, and Glasner remained positive after the last defeat, pointing to the fact we were creating chances, but he was also very clear about the fact that you cannot sell guaranteed starters and not replace them appropriately. And many would take that as a clear message to the board and our sporting director.

Not helping matters is the speculation that surrounds Marc Guehi as he has plenty of suitors and with deadline day approaching our gaffer does not know if he will be here next month.

With ongoing uncertainty for fans, and no real idea yet on how we might strengthen further, Glasner himself in now on record as saying that given our summer business so far, expectations need to shift as being a side that won six of our final seven matches last year, scoring an average of three goals a game, now means absolutely nothing.

Our gaffer has not directly criticised our transfer decisions, but it seems abundantly obvious to everyone that he is not happy. At the end of last season he was confident we would keep all of our key players and at least attempt to push on further in the search of finishing higher in the table.

Yet he is not in control, Dougie Freedman is on player decisions and there appears to be a huge divide between both and the intimation is Glasner does not agree with the decisions taken.

With a week left in the window, especially given Glasner's comments, fans will be hoping that he feels backed again so we can kick on further, as otherwise this could be a very long season indeed.