It is a measure of how far Crystal Palace have come under Oliver Glasner that, after winning the FA Cup and the Community Shield, and with the club only two points off a top four place in the congested Premier League table, a latent sense of disquiet is taking hold around Selhurst Park.
It is no secret Palace are struggling for goals following Eberechi Eze’s summer departure to Arsenal. Glasner highlighted the problem, not for the first time this season, following last week’s 2-1 Uefa Conference League defeat to Strasbourg, a game Palace contrived to lose despite creating a plethora of chances either side of Tyrick Mitchell’s first-half opener.
“It has happened too often this season,” said the Austrian after watching Ismaïla Sarr and Adam Wharton squander open-goal opportunities in a game dominated by Palace, who had 16 shots and twice as many touches in the opposition box as their opponents.
“At the end, we need more consistent scorers. It’s maybe symbolic today that Tyrick Mitchell, the wing-back, scored and all the others missed their chances. We talk about fine margins. You have to take your chances. I haven’t played a European game with as many big chances as we had, and that makes it even worse.”
It was a similar story when Palace returned to league duty against Manchester United on Sunday. By the time Jean-Philippe Mateta opened the scoring with a retaken penalty, the Frenchman had already fired two presentable chances wide. Equally culpable were Wharton and Daichi Kamada, who respectively failed to find the accuracy and purchase required to beat Senne Lammens in the United goal.
The theme continued after Sarr went off with an ankle injury shortly before the break, his replacement Eddie Nketiah failing to punish a slip from Matthijs de Ligt after dawdling just long enough for Luke Shaw to block his effort. It was a moment that epitomised a half in which Palace were dominant but profligate, allowing United to regroup and claim a 2-1 win – their first at Selhurst Park in five years – courtesy of goals from Joshua Zirkzee and Mason Mount.
For Glasner, it marked the latest setback in a campaign that seems to be getting incrementally worse. In September, he was named manager of the month after presiding over an unbeaten start to the season. By the time October was out, a 19-game run without defeat was over and, while no team had created more big chances than Palace’s 34, no other side had missed more than their 23. Now they enter December on a run of two straight losses and with Glasner, whose contract expires at the end of the season, cutting an increasingly disenchanted figure.
Rather than once again bemoaning his side’s lack of cutting edge after the United game, the Austrian elected to reframe the problem, pointing to Palace’s failure to act more decisively in the transfer market after securing European football for the first time. He had a point. Five players left Selhurst Park over the summer at a total cost of £63.2m, potentially rising to £71.5m. An identical number arrived at a combined cost of £48m. It was, suggested Glasner, unnecessarily conservative.
“If you play European football for the first time in your history, you should invest and not save,” he said. “I think January is too late [to make amends]. We will have played more than 50% of our games. Everything was pretty clear, and I didn’t say anything. But today I think it is also time to speak about it, that we missed the chance to play an even better season in the summer.”
When Eze left for Arsenal, he took with him the potential for another 17-goal haul like the one he achieved last season. It is not easy to make up such a shortfall and, while Spain international Yéremy Pino, a £26m summer arrival from Villarreal, has undoubtedly brought creativity to Glasner’s side, he is no goal machine. Pino scored four goals in 34 La Liga outings last term; so far this season, he has one from 11 league games.
The bad news for a stretched Palace squad is that things are likely to get worse before they get better.
So far, they have lost half of the six league games they have played following a European night, winning just once. No team has made fewer line-up changes in the league this season, highlighting an obvious lack of depth beyond the first XI. The absence of Sarr, who contributed a dozen goals and six assists last term, will do nothing to allay that problem. Glasner expects to be without the Senegal international until he leaves for the Africa Cup of Nations later this month.
With or without Sarr, the arrival of another attacker in January is the minimum requirement. Palace can ill-afford not to back a manager who has been attracting covetous glances from clubs across Europe. Glasner was considered by Bayer Leverkusen following Erik ten Hag’s dismissal three months ago and has been linked with a host of other leading clubs, including Real Madrid, Liverpool and Manchester United.
For his part, Glasner has made his position plain. “We need more players who show up and score goals,” he said last month.
If Palace want to build on their unprecedented recent success, and hang on to its architect, it would behove the club to listen.
