What he did with Lyon, and then Lens was seriously impressive. Lens particularly.
Everyone loves banging the experience drum, especially premier league experience. Talking like its an absolute mandatory.
Most successful managers in the prem had no previous prem experience
Agreed.
It's easy now to say that we should have gone with a Frank or a Dyche from the outset, but Sage would have been on the radar for a lot of clubs after what he did in France.
Sage's lack of experience was a concern, but as is the case with promising players, if we want to beat the bigger clubs to a promising individual we usually have to get in there far earlier, thereby taking a risk they are less prepared to take. Another season (or even less) doing well at Lens, and Sage could well have been out of reach.
His style of play was also a concern, but we had just won three trophies in a year and were going into Europe-proper. I can understand why Parish didn't want to miss any chance there might have been to maintain the once-in-a-lifetime momentum by hiring a guy who has a bit of a go. Plus, it's not unrealistic for Parish to think Sage would keep his core principles but make reasonable adjustments to suit the circumstances at Palace. He doesn't seem to have done that, or indeed be able to. I don't feel that is on Parish.
That said, Parish does of course have ultimate reasonability for these key decisions, and I don't doubt he accepts that over the last year a lot of them, either in isolation or in combination, have not worked. He might also accept that the ways in which it hasn't worked were not wholly unpredictable.
I felt in the summer that we were already firmly on the downward slope of the 'buy-develop-sell-begin again' cycle, that harder times would continue until everyone who had achieved all they could with Palace and wanted to leave had been replaced by hungry talent, and that the process may take at least another year during which time we would be highly vulnerable, not just because of the loss of quality, but the break up of the spine and heart of the team. I feel the latter was particularly overlooked.
It was always going to be a transition period, and a difficult one to manage. I said at the time that we should have prioritised experienced campaigners to see us through, and begin the next phase of developing talent far more slowly and later on. A steady hand manager would have made far more sense in the circumstances.
Thing is, that doesn't mean it could only ever have gone as it did, or that the risks were not worth taking. If we were 15th right now, watching Dyche-ball every week, we would all be bemoaning the club's lack of ambition and failure to maintain positive momentum by appointing someone like that 'Sage' bloke who we were linked with!
Many of us are being wise after the event, even if some of us predicted this, or were at least worried about it. At the risk of repeating myself: There is a difference between incompetence or negligence on one hand, and a set of reasonable decisions that ultimately didn't work, on the other.
England
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