Crystal Palace are searching for a new manager for the Premier League run-in after sacking Patrick Vieira, but surely they can’t seriously be ready to stoke up the early Roy Hodgson years at the Palace, can they?
Apparently the word going around is that that it remains most likely in the wake of the state of panic that preceded Patrick Vieira’s sacking last Friday, despite the fact that the side left behind by the Arsenal legend didn’t perform all that badly.
The club’s American owners and Palace chairman Steve Parish have no recourse but to think of the money as the mother lode comes from simply being in the Premier League.
Paddy McCarthy and Darryl Powell are obviously not the answer as they only serve an interim purpose for the time being with the manager’s seat vacant.
Realistically Hodgson turns 76 in August and the fact that he is even somehow in the conversation as a potential solution is a telling sign of the quandary the Eagles are currently caught in – no confidence to press ahead with a clear way forward while being too reluctant and unwilling to sever its ties with the past.
While Hodgson’s main body of work still undoubtedly retains the respect and admiration of the football fraternity even beyond the confines of Palace – if he indeed is hired until the end of the season and he succeeds – the manager taking over later and his coaching staff will always have the specter of the ex-England boss hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles if results begin to turn south.
Undeniably a win-less calendar year for the Eagles certainly didn’t augur well for Vieira but a cursory glance at Palace’s opponents during that run would show that the pressure was certainly all stacked up against him and his boys – Spurs, Chelsea, Manchester United (twice), Newcastle, Brighton (hot on the heels of the Europa League) and Brentford, Liverpool, a resurgent Aston Villa, Manchester City and now this.
Among their remaining fixtures are the eight teams now below them. One can’t also be too eager to forget that the former Arsenal legend picked up 16 points out of 24 against them during the first half of the season.
Sacking him for Hodgson could suggest the club really are going backwards.