Assuming Sage is done where do people think we go from here?
I think we need to bring in a proven fire fighter now who can bring back some basic organisation to our play. We also need to build around a core of decent professionals and focus on being awkward to play against. It won’t be exciting but it might keep us up.
For me I’d go to a 4-5-1 formation. Back four of Mitchell, Lerma, Richards, ????? Midfield of Kamada, Wharton, Timber with Wharton sat a bit deeper. McNeil on the left, Sarr on the right if right in attitude, If not then take your pick from Osorio or Pino. JPM up front with JSL as a rotation option. Be basic focus on getting crosses in and trying to be solid.
If Sage does go I think two things need to happen.
Firstly, the right replacement. At times, the problem has seemed to be that Sage wants to press high and be on the front foot. The natural instinct becomes to appoint a replacement with a more defensive, pragmatic approach.
I'm not sure that's right. We are defending terribly quite often, but also increasingly using the ball badly, and threatening to score less and less. I have started to think it's not the nature of Sage's approach that's failing us. It's the quality of his work.
By extension, I don't think we necessarily need to get, to use obvious examples, a Dyche-type but avoid a Howe-type. I think the quality of the new manager's work is more important than his tactical preference. That's what players respond to most. Especially when it they detect it's absence.
Of course, we need an approach to suit the attributes and quality of the squad (such as they are) but I don't think that's absolutely got to be a defensive pragmatist.
Secondly, there needs to be a serious realignment between the financial needs of the business, the mindset in the squad, and the way the manager works.
It's a fact that we need to sell players at a profit to have a transfer budget. It's also a fact that we can only make serious profit on cheaper young hopefuls or academy graduates. There will always be that conveyor belt.
At the same time, we have mostly stayed up this long because of having a constant core of experienced, decent senior pros, from the originals like Delaney and Jedinak to the likes of McArthur, Dann, on to Hughes, Ayew, and so on.
At any one time, the lions share of the first team were good enough to keep us safe, but not so good as to have serious aspirations of moving to a bigger club. I know they lacked sell on value but the group mindset was one where everyone fights and does a proper job for Palace, because that's the best career and life option for them all.
Having a squad full of developing, saleable assets is fine when they are all on the way up, but once they bloom they all want to go. That means the second tier of players, like Mateta and Sarr, don't want to be left behind. The core is no longer Palace-focussed.
The squad needs to be two-thirds settled, senior pros, then the final third a mix of a couple of stars we can sell and hopefuls who might develop into stars. We've got the percentages all wrong and the culture seems to have suffered for it. The club and manager must be on the same page with this. It must be reflected in the team sheet as well as the transfer market.
