Time, patience and a slight tactical tweak: How Oliver Glasner’s Crystal Palace are dreaming of history across Premier League and FA Cup
Updated 11/04/2025 at 19:02 GMT+1
Ahead of their trip to Etihad Stadium to take on Manchester City on Saturday – live on TNT Sports and discovery+ - we take a look at some of the numbers behind Crystal Palace’s revival after a desperate start. Sometimes, patience and trust in a manager's ability can go a long way as proven by The Eagles' gradual improvement under Oliver Glasner this season.
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Patience is not an attribute in wide supply in football. Eight games came and went at the start of this Premier League season, and still Crystal Palace and Oliver Glasner didn’t have a win.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Palace were a revelation at the end of the previous season.
They won six out of seven to close out, which included winning 1-0 at Anfield and a 4-0 demolition of Manchester United at Selhurst Park.
Coming into the summer, Palace were thought of a possible dark horse contender for a European place.
But then they sold Michael Olise to Bayern Munich, Jordan Ayew and Joachim Andersen both left, and replacements were hard to find.
They eventually did get them in - Eddie Nketiah, Maxence Lacroix and Ismaila Sarr all signed just before the transfer window shut. Glasner had resources, but did he have time?
Palace drew their next three after the end of the window, then three more losses followed. The Eagles were in the bottom three after eight games and seemingly in real trouble.
Reports in October suggested that Palace leadership, led by CEO Steve Parish, were seriously considering sacking Glasner to try and arrest the slump.
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Ultimately, Glasner was given time and in the next game they secured a 1-0 win over Tottenham Hotspur. It’s hard to overstate in retrospect just how massive a result this was.
Things still weren’t perfect – they lost at home to London rivals Fulham two league games later – but the hope had returned and the results kept coming.
Fast forward to April 2025, it's a far different story. Palace are now the team in the Premier League that absolutely no-one wants to face.
Since the turn of the year, only Liverpool (eight), have won more games than Palace (seven). No team in the league has conceded fewer goals (eight) or kept more clean sheets (five).
They have rocketed up the table to sit 11th, just five points off eighth, which we expect to be a European place for the Premier League this season (a further eight off seventh). Oh, and they’re also in an FA Cup semi-final.
To put this into perspective, Palace are not a team like Aston Villa. This is not the rise of a sleeping giant.
Palace’s honours list is winning the second division twice, the third division once, the Full Members Cup (then known as the Zenith Data Systems Cup) once, and two heartbreaking defeats in the FA Cup final versus Manchester United.
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So, how have they done it? One of the interesting things from that report earlier in the season when Glasner was on the brink was this snippet: "There are believed to be concerns among the Palace hierarchy about Glasner’s inflexibility over his favoured 3-4-2-1 system."
The great irony is that this change has not come about from a formation change - Glasner has still stuck inflexibly to his 3-4-2-1 formation and has been vindicated.
What has changed is the way the team plays. If we draw a split in the season after the 2-0 home reverse to Fulham, it is not quite a perfect split (11 games before, which includes the Spurs win, and then 19 after) but it is an interesting exercise to look at what has changed.
They are unsurprisingly scoring more and conceding fewer goals (that’s how you win football games!) but they are actually taking fewer shots per game and getting fewer shots on target per game.
They are crucially, however, converting 35.7% of their big chances, a big increase of 15% on their previous tally of 22.7%.
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What’s also interesting is that they have had far less of the ball, decreasing from an average of 45.8% possession to 42.9%.
They’re completing around 30 passes per game (from 322.8 to 291.4) and are down on touches per game in the opposition box.
The lesson to take from this is that it seems as if rather than changing the way he sets up his team, Glasner has changed the way he asks them to play.
Glasner has always been a manager who thrives when his teams are countering with pace, but he does also mix in a lot of slower, possession-based stuff.
Palace are now even more high-octane, deny teams space when they have the ball, and counter ruthlessly when they win it back.
In some ways, it’s just a simpler way of playing - don’t overthink it and trust your instincts.
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The other thing to note here is that at a certain point, Glasner just needed time. He is still only a little over a year into the job, and the summer was his first window.
He needed time to get the new players signed up to speed, and time to dissect what the problem was without Olise (fairly obvious when you lose one of your best players) and what the solution was (much trickier to figure out, and why managers are paid so much).
Also, don't forget that Palace had seven first-team players reach major international finals last summer.
Daniel Munoz and Jefferson Lerma were at the Copa America final, Eberchi Eze, Adam Wharton, Dean Henderson and Marc Guehi were in the European Championships final, and Jean-Philippe Mateta made it to the Paris Olympic Games final.
The fact that he has turned it around is testament both to his ability as a manager and Palace’s patience. The Eagles are flying - now how far they can soar?
How to watch Manchester City v Crystal Palace
Manchester City take on Crystal Palace on Saturday, April 12. Kick-off is at 12:30 UK time, with live coverage on TNT Sports 1, TNT Sports Ultimate and discovery+ starting from 11:00.
TNT Sports is available across all major TV platforms, offering a line-up of up to four TV channels (TNT Sports 1, TNT Sports 2, TNT Sports 3, TNT Sports 4), and up to six digital or red-button channels (TNT Sports 5 to 10), and TNT Sports Ultimate plus TNT Sports Box Office HD.
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