One of the things that has changed over time is that very few managers work their way up to the top level from lower ones. The days where a Clough or Ferguson could take a Forest or Aberdeen all the way from obscurity to glory are long gone as the glass ceiling is impenetrable. Also, doing well at smaller clubs used to be the best way to get a job managing a big club, but now, Thomas Frank notwithstanding, that almost never happens. If anything, you have a better chance of a big club job if you fail at a smaller club, but do it in the "right" way. Roberto Martinez got Wigan relegated playing total football and has been working at higher levels every since. Vincent Kompany got Burnley relegated with a whimper and went on to Bayern Munich.
What I've take from this is that there is a particular skill set for managing and coaching top elite mega rich clubs, and it's totally different to managing smaller ones. If Guardiola is a genius then he's one of a very particular type: nobody has ever been better at winning things at clubs that would have won them anyway.
That's not to knock him, loads of big clubs work their way through coach after coach who can't deliver even when megabucks are spent, but there's very little reason to think Guardiola would succeed at Palace, or even get us to a notably higher league place than the managers we've had before.
What I think a big time manager would do at Palace is play in the big club style. There would be lots of focus on pressing as soon as we lose the ball, even if it was obviously risky for our players. There would also be evidence of well drilled, high quality patterns of playing out from the back and through the midfield up to the final third. This would involve a greater degree of risk than we are used to, with players spreading out high and wide across the pitch in possession, leaving ourselves more open if it goes wrong. Which it would, more often than it does when you've got elite players from front to back and throughout the squad, as ours would have more loose touches and misplaced passes.
Plus, a pattern of play that gets the ball to a champions league winning forward line in good positions is a very good method of defence. It makes the opponents drop off and double up for fear of what a peak Salah or Messi will do to them, so you have less defending to do. Opponents wouldn't be as scared of our players, and rightly so. A massive part of the tactics wouldn't work as well.
Ultimately, what I think we would find is that the upside of big shot manager tactics in terms of good use of the ball would be counterbalanced by the downsides of inappropriate use of a system designed for elite players. We'd finish midtable again, but in different style.
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