Three games into the new Championship season, Crystal Palace found themselves alongside Peterborough, sitting rock bottom of the league table with zero points after three straight defeats. But after winning six of their last nine games, Palace now find themselves in the playoff positions, neatly poised in 4th place behind Cardiff, Middlesbrough and Leicester.
Thus, right now I ought to be considering if this remarkable run of form consequently means The Eagles are now genuine contenders for promotion. Instead, the talk of the town at Selhurst Park is all about who the club’s next manager might be, after the shock departure of first team boss Dougie Freedman, to their Championship rivals Bolton Wanderers.
To your average football fan, Freedman’s move to Bolton appears to simply be a progressive move upwards, a move to further his career, leaving behind him a club with limited resources for one with a bigger budget and higher hopes.
Crystal Palace fans however, will tell you that in terms of ambition and potential, this is simply not the case. The club possesses a remarkable crop of young players, including the likes of wing magician Wilfried Zaha and midfield dynamo Jonathan Williams, as well as in-form elder statesmen such as striker Glenn Murray and goalkeeper Julian Speroni. Based on some of their recent performances, should the current squad all remain at the club come January, the team could still be well in with a shout of promotion.
Freedman’s doubts over the club’s ambitions, as his departure suggests, are thus rather confusing. Freedman after all had said he could not understand why Palace weren’t considered as favourites going into games against the likes of Cardiff and Bolton, who were both defeated by Palace earlier in the season. Furthermore, surrounding speculation that Wilfried Zaha might leave for the Premiership come January, Freedman’s response was to suggest that both he and Palace may well be in the top flight come 2013.
Club Chairman Steve Parish nonetheless is certainly sure of his views regarding the club’s ambitions, having stated that the club remains just as ambitious as its former manager.
Parish told Sky Sports News, “I had a very good relationship with Dougie and I wish him every success in the future. Dougie feels his career can be served elsewhere, I don’t feel betrayed and now we have to find a new manager. He had a good offer on the table from us.”
“Dougie is not hugely motivated by money but maybe I could be proved wrong. It is more about ambition. I feel that we have got ambition, we want to get into the Premier League and stay there.”
The question of ambition is a difficult one to comprehend, however, if Palace and Freedman both see their future’s in the Premier League, then why could the two parties not agree upon a new deal for Freedman? The Scot is after all a Palace legend, having kept the side in the English second tier as both a player and a manager. In total, Freedman scored over 100 goals for The Eagles, making over 350 appearances and is subsequently adored by Palace fans everywhere. Clearly something went drastically wrong behind the scenes, for surely nobody connected to the club wished to see Freedman leave.
Money, however, in football, is so often the decisive factor. Freedman was understood to have been at the lower end of The Championship’s manager pay scale, and thus the attraction of a bigger, long-term contract at Bolton Wanderers must have heavily influenced his decision to leave South London. Parish’s supposed ‘good offer’ was apparently not good enough to keep Freedman it seems.
So although the story of Palace’s brilliant start to the season must go on, it will continue without Dougie Freedman at the helm of the club. How then can Palace replace a man of such stature? With another man of such iconic status, of course. Therefore in this regard, although former Wolves boss Mick McCarthy and Freedman’s assistant Lennie Lawrence are being linked with the vacant post, there is only one possible replacement that Crystal Palace fans would be satisfied with; Crawley Town director of football, Steve Coppell. Having already been at the club for two spells, as manager between 1984-93, in which he took Palace to the FA Cup final and as director of football for a season in 1995, could Coppell be prized away from the Sussex club for a third spell at SE25? Palace fans will certainly hope he can.
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