How Oliver Glasner turned Crystal Palace's peculiar season around | OneFootball

The Austrian boss did not panic when the club were winless eight games into the season - and his faith in his methods is paying off

The Austrian was talking to a team who were winless from eight Premier League games, lingering in the depths of the relegation zone, and whose five goals made them the division’s lowest-scoring side.

He felt, though, that performances had generally been encouraging, that his team had been taking as many shots as their opponents and going toe-to-toe with them in almost every game, and that the poor run of results was not going to last. The tide would turn.

It did. In their past 11 Premier League games, Palace, who beat London rivals West Ham 2-0 away on Saturday, have lost just once — to Arsenal — and if they win at Brentford on Sunday they will leapfrog the Bees into 11th place.

My man: Glasner has seen Eberechi Eze play himself into form

AFP via Getty Images

“I tried to explain [why we weren’t winning], but it always looks like excuses,” Glasner said ahead of the recent 2-0 win at Leicester.

“Winners don’t give excuses. They work on their weaknesses and try to improve their strengths. This is what we did.

“We had 12 players starting [training], [at the] earliest, 10 days before the start of the Premier League campaign. We had six players 10 days before, one player starting one day before. Ismaila Sarr, for example, was not allowed to train with Marseille in pre-season. He had to train individually. We had four signings on deadline day already after three games.

“Then we started training together in the middle of September. How could we expect everything would be fluid? Then you don’t need a manager! You need to find that continuity again, it’s not instant.”

Winners don’t give excuses - they work on their weaknesses and improve their strengths

Oliver Glasner

Among the players to join up late were Daniel Munoz and Jefferson Lerma, who competed for Colombia at the Copa America, England stars Eberechi Eze and Adam Wharton at Euro 2024, and Jean-Philippe Mateta who won silver at the Paris Olympics for France.

Those injuries hit the likes of Cheick Doucoure and new signing Chadi Riad, as well as Wharton. A prolonged saga over whether to try to cure his lingering groin injury by losing him for a short period so he could undergo surgery culminated in him having the operation, only to still feel pain afterwards. Only now is he back on the grass and approaching a proper return.

On the pitch, Sarr took time to adapt to the role of partnering Eze as an inverted forward in Glasner’s unconventional 3-4-2-1 system, while the likes of Daichi Kamada cannot be said to have had the desired impact since his free-agent signing in the summer.

And Glasner must shoulder some responsibility, too, for insisting on keeping the first-team squad small. Yes, this has afforded opportunities to academy product Caleb Kporha and youngster Justin Devenny, but depth, particularly in midfield and attack, has been sorely lacking as a result of a shrunken squad size, coupled with injuries.

Flying: Mateta celebrates scoring a late equaliser against Chelsea at Selhurst Park

Bradley Collyer/PA Wire

Yet still their season is becoming a success, with results picking up, injuries abating, and key players from last season — departed star Michael Olise, now of Bayern Munich, aside — overcoming their summer hangovers and playing themselves into form.

That includes Eze, Mateta and Marc Guehi, already vital figures for how Palace play, but also Dean Henderson, Will Hughes and Maxence Lacroix, who have been among the Eagles’ most reliable generals in a campaign now delivering good news much more regularly than bad for its fanbase, who may get a first look at new signing Romain Esse on Sunday.