Oliver Glasner does not believe in magic. He is an admirably pragmatic man who trusts his principles. He trusted them at the end of last season when Palace looked like world-beaters and everything was going right, and he trusts them now when Palace look like relegation candidates and everything is going wrong. Give it time and equilibrium will return; the principles will have their effect. Or you could just wait for the visit of Tottenham.
Trust the principles all you like, Spurs will still be Spurs, a paradox that suggests there is some deeper process that ultimately matters far more than the surface processes that can be seen and analysed. They are a club with a fragile soul, capable always of a dreadful performance.
Poor Mikey Moore, who made his full Premier League debut, barely got a look-in. Rattled by Palace’s press, Spurs started with their worst half of the season other than the second 45 at Brighton. If anything, it got worse after the break. “We need to be a lot more clear-headed,” Ange Postecoglou said. “It was a bit of a battle. It was stop-start, lots of standing around and we didn’t deal with that.”
For Palace, it was a much-needed league win, their first of the season, which should ease the pressure on Glasner. “All our performances were OK but we missed a little,” he said. “Today we showed a courage and intensity, and maybe this is what we were missing.” As ever, he focused on the wing‑backs, on the way Daniel Muñoz’s pressure led to the goal, and on the way Tyrick Mitchell closed down Pedro Porro to force him to overhit a cross in injury time.
It still feels slightly bewildering that Palace have got to this pitch of anxiety, with potential replacements being openly discussed. Certainly Glasner still seems popular enough at Selhurst Park, with fans chanting his name at the final whistle. The fixture at Wolves on Saturday suddenly seems a lot less daunting.
In the last seven games of last season Palace took 19 points and scored 21 goals. “That was not the truth about Palace,” Glasner had said. But what is the truth? It surely wasn’t the first eight games of this season, from which they took just three points and scored only five goals. Palace’s dismal start to this campaign could not really just be regression to the mean, could it? There are reasons; there always are.
Glasner has been openly critical of the way the club signed four players on deadline day. But even had their deals been completed in time for them to be fully integrated by now, Palace had the fourth lowest net spend in the division. And it is not as though the signings who did come in earlier in the window have made much of an impact so far.
For now the absences are far more obvious than their replacements. It is not just that Michael Olise’s imagination and drive has been lost, it is that others have suffered without him creating space for them. Similarly, Joachim Andersen’s defensive qualities are missed but so, too, are his sweeping diagonal passes and switches of play.
Jean-Philippe Mateta, after a golden finish to last season, had struggled to get going, which is perhaps the result of his Olympic exertions with France but may also be to do with him simply getting less service.
It has not helped, either, that the midfield has been unsettled by injury. Cheick Doucouré has managed just one league start while Adam Wharton, who made such an impression after signing from Blackburn in January, has been struggling with a groin problem and may need surgery – although he had a decent game on Sunday. To make matters worse, Jefferson Lerma was forced off with a hamstring injury midway through the first half.
Palace had trained with a back four last week, having trialled the system in a behind-closed-doors game against Ipswich in the last international break, yet they started with the familiar Glasner 3-4-2-1 – although as he would say, what really matters are the principles of play.
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Those principles allowed Palace to unsettle Spurs with their press, leading to the goal as Porro was forced into playing a horrible bouncing ball across his own box to Micky van de Ven, who was dispossessed by Muñoz. The Colombian’s cross was flicked on by Eze and Mateta slammed in his third of the season in the league.
Spurs did have chances, a Van de Ven shot deflecting off Brennan Johnson and on to a post, while Dean Henderson made a fine low save from James Maddison, but Palace should have been out of sight by the midpoint of the second half, Eze and Mateta both snatching at very good opportunities. That made for a nervier finish than it perhaps should have been but Palace’s season, at last, is up and running.
