What a difference a year makes.
In that year we've lost Eze, Guehi and Lacroix (so far), and while some will say wait until the end of this window, I very much doubt we will be bringing in players of equivalent quality.
This is not necessarily a criticism of the club.
If clubs like Villa and Newcastle can lose Rogers, Gordon and Tonali why should Palace be any different.
Don't be surprised if Arsenal also add Bruno G and Konsa too.
Agreed on two different points here.
Firstly, Palace can do all the homework in the world and not come up with a hot streak of recruitment success like we had when we brought in Olise, Eze, Guehi etc. Every transfer is a gamble, especially when dealing in young players you hope will step up and then develop. Just those three names alone are the Man City and England centre back, the Arsenal No10 and the Bayern (possibly soon Madrid) and France No10. You could try for a hundred years and not get that lucky again. Nobody could seriously criticise the scouting team for failing to find another future Ballon d'Or candidate in the lower leagues. We cannot use the last few years as a recruitment yardstick. Whoever we sign going forward will not be as good as that lot.
Secondly, people don't talk about Villa enough. Newcastle are the go-to example to prove to the naysayers that FFP and SCR are real and prevent clubs much bigger than us from ever seriously kicking on, but look at Villa, too. Huge club, with owners who must be ambitious and willing to invest as they are just rebuilding a massive stand behind the goal. They have just won the Europa League, will be in the Champions League next year, again, and yet have to sell their best player. Not only that, they have to sell him to a direct rival for a champions league place. Not only that, the rival can afford to buy him despite running themselves like a f***ing circus for years. There is no reward whatsoever for Villa's acumen and achievements and no punishment at all for Chelsea's incompetence and failure. It is a closed shop.
Pulling these two observations together: Palace could not have recruited better than they did, but in terms of the overall status of the club it made little difference in the end. We finished midtable like we always did anyway. We won the FA Cup, but we were a kick away from winning it before under Pardew so I don't think that is an achievement we can attribute directly to developing young talent. We even won this ridiculous conference league thing (and it is absolutely f***ing ridiculous, by the way) and in so doing got into the Europa League, but can we keep our players? No chance. The whole chapter was highly enjoyable, but we cannot mistake that for Palace moving up to the 'next level'. Like Villa and Newcastle we have found in our own way that modern football prevents progress or change at the top end.
All you can hope for is to achieve the best that a club of your status can. For Villa or Newcastle that is to qualify for the Champions League once or twice in a generation. For us, that's winning a domestic cup once in a century, and a novelty European campaign. Make the most of it, because we will not be back soon as it all happens against a backdrop of unprecedented churn. The better the team performs, the quicker and more often it gets broken up. It gets broken up so that the clubs you hope to catch up to can get further away from you, even if they fail to preform and you perform very well.
In a funny way I actually think our best bet is to embrace the absence of star quality in our ranks. Would we want another wave of promising talent? It seems just to accelerate the churn, which in turn seems to destabilise the team. The more star players you have, the more often you will sell them. Every time we have to rebuild, we risk it not going well.
If we had a squad largely made of good, but not star, players who the big clubs didn't want, would we actually be worse off? Never mind French teenagers and highly regarded youth players at £10-20m a pop, half of whom fail anyway. I don't mind Palace going for solid, unspectacular players with no real sell-on value who will give us a reliable base and who will still f***ing be here next year and the year after.
Obviously, doing that would limit our potential, but gambling on 'the next big thing' players doesn't get you anywhere new or better even when the gamble pays off. So why take those risks?
For me, the whole experiment in this model of player trading is returning mixed results. What we are now seeing is the downside of it. Every fucker leaves, and few of us have much faith that those who remain or who we might bring in to replace them can fill their boots. It is now at the stage when the second-tier players such as Lacroix and Mateta will be gone.
Never mind asking who we can sell at a profit to reinvest, look at the squad and ask who can we rely on?
Addressing that must be the recruitment priority.
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