Crystal Palace: Dan Cook believes players not pleased by start to the season

Dan Cook has claimed on the HLTCO podcast that there is now frustration growing amongst Crystal Palace players and fans amid their poor start to the campaign.

While Palace have indeed had a tough set of fixtures to kick off their second season under Patrick Vieira, they’ve only managed to win one game in the league and currently find themselves just one place above the bottom three.

At the minute, Palace have only managed to beat Aston Villa, who have had a pretty horrid time of things themselves under Steven Gerrard, and Cook now thinks frustration is starting to grow among fans and players.

“I do have a degree of hope that we can go into this game at the weekend and really show the best of ourselves and hopefully get a positive result for our fans – and also just to put the team in a better frame of mind, because the longer this goes on, the more worried you will be that we will be in a long-term, protracted relegation battle.

“I think the potential of this group is such that there’s a real frustration starting to build, not just amongst the fans, but also amongst the playing squad as well that we should be doing better, that we should be able to cut out these errors late in games, and it’s just not coming to fruition.”

TIF Thoughts on Palace’s form…

After an impressive first season under Vieira last time out, the additions of Sam Johnstone, Cheick Doucoure and Chris Richards in particular should have set them up for at least another solid campaign in mid-table.

However, thus far, they’ve failed to beat teams such as Newcastle United and Brentford – clubs who they’d likely see as potential rivals in the Premier League – so Vieira will know he’s got his work cut out at the minute to turn things around.

Vieira will see this upcoming run of games as the perfect opportunity to transform their season, with all of their next seven league games against sides currently inside the bottom half, which should allow them to catapult themselves nearer the top 10 before the World Cup break arrives.