Premier League: Glasner has Crystal Palace sparkling

This is the last weekend of Premier League action before the next round of World Cup qualifiers provides us the pleasure of watching the Ireland national side face Portugal and our old friends Armenia.

Many Premier League sides will be keen to get their house in order or lay down a marker ahead of the break, especially after last weekend’s results threw a couple of cats among the pigeons regarding title ambitions or even progress on the table.

The most impactful feline to avian encounter was the result between Crystal Palace and Liverpool. This may be the worst week, on the field, in the Liverpool career of Arne Slot, as defeat to Crystal Palace followed by the loss at Galatasaray, ended their 100% record in both the Premier League and Champions League competitions. Liverpool, up to now, have found a way to win despite indifferent performances, met the team that has certainly got their number lately and were not afraid of the Mesrseyside outfit’s reputation.

In their heads

Already this season, Crystal Palace have got the better of the Premier League champions twice and have only lost once to Liverpool in their past five meetings altogether.

Maybe it should not have been a surprise. After all, Palace had an 18-match unbeaten record going into the game that dates back to the middle of April, last season. It is now 19 matches unbeaten after their impressive win over Dynamo Kyiv in Poland on Thursday. Notably, this is currently the longest unbeaten run in any of the big-five European leagues, with Barcelona in a far distant second on a nine-match unbeaten run and even that came to an end against PSG in their midweek Champions League encounter.

Glasner effect

The Eagles are currently lying third in the Premier League, just three points behind leaders Liverpool and a point behind second-place Arsenal. And the consensus among the football community is that the main reason for this is the Austrian at the helm, Oliver Glasner. Sure, Palace have been working a while to build a strong and difficult side to defeat as we see now. But the backbone of steel that sees them now claim the scalps of the current Champions and last season’s champions Man City in the FA Cup final, came with Glasner’s arrival in South London last year.

Glasner, who led his previous club Eintracht Frankfurt to Europa League glory in 2022, has somehow brought the belief and will for success to a club, that until last season, never won any silverware or ever finished any higher than 10th place in the topflight, to suddenly beat City for the FA Cup final and claim their highest point’s total ever last May, all within a year of his arrival at Selhurst Park.

And it’s not like Glasner has had a free reign to build this team the way he wants to. The club did very little business in the transfer window, they lost their star attacker Eberechi Eze to Arsenal before this season, just a year after losing Michael Olise to Bayern. And they barely held on to their talismanic club captain Marc Guéhi, who still says he’s ready to go to Liverpool come the end of the season. Yet Glasner manages to instil a confidence in a side that certainly adds up to more than the sum of their parts.

Fresh attack

Key to that, this season, is the drive of his attack in Jean-Philippe Mateta, Ismaïla Sarr, Eddie Nketiah and new signing Yéremy Pino, who showed against Liverpool and Kyiv, an ability to launch pacey, free-running attacks that seem to blindside opposition defender by targeting weaknesses, yet still able to adapt to switch styles and wings when required. In defence, the keeping of Guéhi has proven fortuitous too, with the retention of the Ivorian-born English international vital in the side only conceding three league goals so far this season and one of them was Fredrico Chiesa’s last equaliser in the Liverpool game. But overall and especially in the first half, Guéhi and his fellow defenders ably handled what Liverpool could throw at them.

Slot, on Liverpool's sideline, could have only looked on and wonder ‘what if?’ as his centre-back target ably defend against his best attackers.

The most refreshing aspect of Glasner and this Crystal Palace side is the genuine belief that there are no limits to what they can achieve together. One would imagine that a small club, with a limited budget and a small squad will eventually run out of steam. The side is not perfect; they have drawn three games in their six unbeaten league matches. But any eventual demise will not arise by any lack of belief or will from the players or management.

With such a successful mindset, it is not surprising that the rumour mill already has Glasner moving to the still mis-firing giants Man United to replace Ruben Amorim. Indeed, this may be the best and only way to upset the Palace bandwagon now, even if Glasner working with the Glazers sounds totally incongruous.