The English Football Thread

[Fulham Broadway 17,810]

19 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Lucas Paqueta betting charges ‘found to be not proven’, commission says

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6515053/2025/07/31/lucas-paqueta-betting-case-west-ham/

Lucas Paqueta will not face punishment for alleged breaches of the Football Association’s betting rules after an independent regulatory commission found the charges against the West Ham United midfielder could not be proven.

The Brazil international, who denied all charges against him, was facing a potential lifetime ban from football if found guilty.

However, the regulatory commission found the most serious charges of spot fixing “to be not proven” following a hearing, it said in a statement released by the English FA on Thursday.

The commission did find that two further rule breaches, effectively relating to Paqueta’s co-operation with the FA’s investigation, could be proven and “will decide an appropriate sanction for these breaches at the earliest opportunity”. These two breaches of FA Rule F3 are in relation to the Brazilian’s alleged failures to comply with his obligations to answer questions and provide information to the investigation.

 

Paqueta has featured for West Ham in pre-season (Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)

In a post on Instagram, following the announcement of the commission’s ruling on Thursday, Paqueta wrote: “The enemy will come against us one way, but they will flee seven ways.

“Since the first day of this investigation, I have maintained my innocence against these extremely serious accusations.

“I can’t say anything more now, but I also can’t express how grateful I am to God and how eager I am to return to playing football with a smile on my face.

“To my wife who never let go of my hand, to West Ham, to the fans who always cheered me on, to Fernando Malta and my legal team at Level (Alastair Campbell, Jonathan Hyman, Dan Lowen), Nick De Marco KC, and Kendrah Potts — thank you for everything.”

What You Should Read Next

Betting in football: what are the rules for players and supporters?

The UK's betting laws are widely considered to be the most liberal in the world - so what are the rules for players and fans?

The commission’s ruling brings to an end a lengthy process, which started in August 2023 and has been beset by delays.

An initial hearing into the case began in March but was put on hold because lawyers on both sides had other commitments. It eventually concluded in May, with former West Ham manager David Moyes among the witnesses for Paqueta’s defence.

Paqueta was charged by the Football Association with misconduct in May 2024 over four alleged breaches of the governing body’s betting rules following a 10-month investigation that began in August of the previous year.

Paqueta was accused of deliberately getting yellow cards in four Premier League matches between November 2022 and August 2023. The four bookings came in games against Leicester City on November 12, 2022, Aston Villa on March 12, 2023, Leeds United on May 21, 2023, and Bournemouth on August 12, 2023.

The FA alleged that Paqueta ‘directly sought to influence…these matches by intentionally seeking to receive a card from the referee, for the improper purpose of affecting the betting market in order for one or more persons to profit from betting’.

He was also charged with two further rule breaches, effectively relating to his cooperation with the FA’s investigation.

Paqueta denied any wrongdoing and West Ham have backed him throughout the process. He previously called on the FA to undertake a “thorough investigation” into what he called “false and misleading” reporting on the case, claiming information had been leaked by “an individual close to the case”.

West Ham United vice-chair Karren Brady said on Thursday: “We are pleased Lucas has been cleared. He has maintained his innocence from the outset, and as a club we have resolutely stood by him and supported him throughout the process.

“Despite the incredible pressure on him, Lucas has performed week in and week out for the club, always giving everything.

“It has been a difficult time for Lucas and his family, but he has remained absolutely professional throughout and he is now looking forward to drawing a line under this episode, as is everyone at West Ham United.”

Manchester City were interested in signing Paqueta, who has a contract until summer 2027 with the option of a further year, two summers ago but the FA’s investigation ended the then-Premier League champions pursuit of the player.

In May, West Ham head coach Graham Potter revealed the investigation had taken its toll on Paqueta mentally and physically.

He was left in tears after being booked against Tottenham Hotspur on May 4, and Paqueta’s wife, Maria Fournier, later posted on Instagram that they had “been living this nightmare for two years”.

 

Paqueta, after being booked in the 1-1 draw with Tottenham at London Stadium on May 4 (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Paqueta’s case is the latest involving breaches of football’s gambling regulations in recent years.

England international Ivan Toney — then of Brentford — was banned from football for eight months in May 2023, while Newcastle United midfielder Sandro Tonali was suspended from all football activity for 10 months following a similar case in Italy. The English FA later handed him a further suspended two-month ban.

Paqueta joined West Ham in August 2022 from French side Lyon and quickly became a key player for the east London club.

He has made 120 appearances for the club in total, including 36 last season after he was cleared to play while the case against him was decided upon.

He was part of the side that won the UEFA Conference League in 2023, starting and playing the full match in the win over Fiorentina in the final.

Paqueta came through the youth ranks at Flamengo in his homeland and made 95 senior appearances before a move to European football with Lyon in 2020. He has won 55 caps for Brazil, scoring 11 goals, and was part of the Copa America-winning squad in 2019.

Well thats ok then. Nothing to see here, move along now....

Its a warning shot by the FA. Basically saying ''we know a lot of players are at it, and we're watching you''

[Vesper 31,180]

Guardiola wanted a smaller squad. Instead it’s grown. How can Man City trim it?

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6526978/2025/08/01/manchester-city-squad-guardiola-trim/

It has been 73 days since Pep Guardiola said he would quit Manchester City if he did not have a smaller squad next season.

That was in May, after a comfortable win at home against Bournemouth, when his lip quivered after committing what he views as the heinous act of leaving four senior players festering at home.

Joking or not, he might have to leave a dozen at home for the opening match against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Two weeks out from the start of the new Premier League season, the mission to condense the squad still needs work. Rather than trim, City have made a net addition of two first-team players this summer.

Sometimes, taking two steps forward and one step back is the way to progress. That is certainly how City will view it, having acted rapidly to acquire their main targets before the Club World Cup.

Buying before selling has the benefit that other clubs cannot hold them to ransom, knowing there is money burning a hole in their pocket.

But signing James Trafford, Marcus Bettinelli, Rayan Ait-Nouri, Tijjani Reijnders and Rayan Cherki means Guardiola has 31 players.

While there has been a conscious effort to reduce the squad’s average age and wage bill, it is an expensive squad to run, with several players surplus to requirements and others seemingly having little chance of regular minutes.

Here is The Athletic’s assessment of the situation…

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McAtee is likely to leave but City won't be making the mistake they did with Cole Palmer. PSR has changed approaches to academy products

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What needs to be done?

City had the luxury of two leading men for part of this summer. New sporting director Hugo Viana, almost four months into his role since joining from Sporting CP, was being supported by director of football Txiki Begiristain as part of a transition, but he ended his 13-year spell this week.

Viana will continue to be aided by Carlos Raphael Moersen, who is director of football transactions at City Football Group (CFG, the club’s overarching owner) and has been helping lead some negotiations with prospective buyers this summer.

City have brought in some money — Kyle Walker has moved to Burnley for a fee that could reach £5million ($6.6m), Maximo Perrone’s switch to Como is worth €15million (£13m; $17m) and €24m has arrived after Yan Couto’s loan deal at Borussia Dortmund was made permanent.

But to get numbers down, established players will have to leave soon.

Finding permanent takers for Kalvin Phillips, given the financial package of a fee plus wages, has been tricky. Jack Grealish and James McAtee are expected to leave too.

 

Kalvin Phillips was on loan at relegated Ipswich Town last season (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)

The fourth expected exit is goalkeeper Stefan Ortega, as City now have four senior goalkeepers following Trafford’s arrival.

City want Ederson to stay until the end of his contract next year and are open to selling Ortega, who also has a year left on his deal and wants to play regularly as he looks to break into Germany’s squad for the World Cup next summer.

Then there is the possibility of allowing younger players to go out on loan. Sverre Nypan, the 18-year-old who joined from Rosenborg for £12.5million, will go out on loan as part of a development plan but a prospective move to Ajax is thought to no longer be on the cards.

La Liga club Girona, part of the CFG network, are keen on loaning Vitor Reis and Claudio Echeverri.

A year in Spain represents a good development opportunity for Reis, who is 19 and joined the club in January from Palmeiras for £29.5million. He is highly rated internally but showed in his second start for City against Wydad at the Club World Cup that there are parts of his game that need work.

Echeverri is also 19 but represents a different case. Guardiola is a huge admirer and saw fit to bring Echeverri on for his debut in the FA Cup final just months after arriving from Argentina.

Girona would love to have him, while Roma have made a case for a year in Italy, but City are deliberating whether it would be better to keep him in-house to learn from the manager and other forwards such as Erling Haaland and Omar Marmoush.

Oscar Bobb is very likely to stay, with the 22-year-old winger impressing Guardiola last summer before a fractured leg ruined his season.

Nico O’Reilly faces a fight for minutes due to the arrival of Ait-Nouri at left-back, where he impressed last season. The plan is for O’Reilly, 20, to stay, as he can also operate in his more natural midfielder role.

McAtee is more established but his role last season was largely restricted to substitute cameos. Nottingham Forest have been discussing a fee of around £25million for him but Viana wants more. Eintracht Frankfurt, who McAtee visited last month, view these sums as out of their league.

In defence, City are overstocked, with 10 players across the back four, leading to speculation that one or two could depart. John Stones was not given a single minute at the Club World Cup despite fully recovering from an injury-ravaged season. The England centre-back, who has a year left on his deal, said during the Club World Cup that he did not want to leave and there is no prospect of him departing this summer.

Manuel Akanji and Abdukodir Khusanov are two others with a point to prove. Khusanov, 21, barely featured in the final few months of the season after joining from Nice in January, but no approaches have been made.

In midfield, there is an argument that City are also overstocked. It remains to be seen how quickly Rodri can regain form after his anterior cruciate ligament injury, so the cover provided by Nico Gonzalez and Mateo Kovacic could be important. Tijjani Reijnders can also drop back to play as the deeper No 6.

 

Tijjani Reijnders was one of City’s summer additions (Kevin C Cox/Getty Images)

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Could City face an issue registering players?

Premier League clubs will have to register their official 25-man squad after the transfer window closes on September 1.

They can only name a maximum of 17 non-homegrown senior players, with the rest of the squad comprising ‘homegrown players’ — those who have trained at an English club for three seasons (or 36) months between the ages of 15 and 21, regardless of nationality.

City have 17 non-homegrown players above the age of 21 and nine homegrown players above the age of 21.

That is only one too many, a situation aided by the Premier League rule that dictates under-21 players, those born after January 1, 2004, do not take up spaces in the 25-man squad.

Rico Lewis, Khusanov, Reis, O’Reilly, Savinho and Echeverri all fall into that category, although 22-year-old Bobb becomes a senior homegrown player for the first time.

There are different rules in the Champions League, so if City do not loan or sell anyone else, they would have to leave four non-homegrown players out in the cold.

UEFA’s ‘A list’ does not offer the same blanket exclusion for under-21 players. They have to be under-21 and homegrown, which means Khusanov, Reis, Savinho and Echeverri all require a space, unlike in the Premier League.

Eight spaces are exclusively reserved for locally trained players, with no more than four of that total made up of association-trained players reared at other English clubs.

Even if Grealish, Phillips and McAtee all leave, that will not be an issue for City, with Trafford, O’Reilly, Lewis, Bobb and Foden all club-trained, and Betinelli, Stones and Ake all association-trained. It is another reason the two goalkeepers were recruited this summer.

The risk of carrying such a bloated squad is not just regulatory, however. It is a matter of identity and contentment, too. Players at this level possess egos and pride. They want to contribute and feel like a valued member of the squad but it is difficult to achieve across an entire squad, with so many players being reduced to a spectator role.

City were quick out of the blocks this window but they need to start getting a shift on if they are to satisfy Guardiola’s demand for an optimised squad.

[NikkiCFC 8,528]

Not impressed with City squad rebuilding. I see them behind Liverpool, Arsenal and us next season. 

[Vesper 31,180]

Missed wages, closed stand, quitting players: Why Sheffield Wednesday could go bust

https://www.espn.co.uk/football/story/_/id/45898609/why-sheffield-wednesday-danger-going-existence

In April 1991, John Sheridan scored the winner for Sheffield Wednesday against Manchester United in the League Cup final, and that 1-0 victory was an even bigger shock than you might think: to this day it's the last time a club playing outside the top division of English football won a major trophy.

Wednesday, who finished third in the second tier to gain promotion, beat a United side who finished sixth in the old First Division. And while the club have enjoyed some remarkable stories in recent years -- including pulling off the greatest comeback in EFL playoff history, and avoiding relegation from a seemingly impossible position two seasons ago -- it's that day at Wembley that remains etched in history.

Today, with the club in desperate financial trouble, such heights seem further away than ever. Such is the dire situation at Hillsborough that there's no certainty they will take to the field for their season opener against Leicester City on Sunday. And if they do, a supporters' protest is planned against controversial owner Dejphon Chansiri.

So, why are Wednesday in trouble, how bad is it, and why does it matter?

Why is Sheffield Wednesday's plight such a big story?

With Wednesday formed in 1867, only four league clubs -- Notts County, Stoke City, Wrexham and Nottingham Forest -- have been around for longer.

Wednesday, nicknamed the Owls, have been out of the Premier League for 25 years, so it would be no surprise if their name doesn't resonate globally -- other than for the odd quirk of being named after the day the founding cricket club used to play its games. Yet they were one of the biggest clubs in the early 1900s, and only 12 teams have won more than their 10 major trophies in the history of English football. It's just that the 1991 League Cup is the only silverware they've won since 1935.

Even though the club have been outside of the top flight for all but a few months of this century, they still rank 15th for total points earned and played in the opening eight seasons of the Premier League.

While many other clubs have come close to going out of business, or actually gone bust, Wednesday are by far the biggest to get to this stage. They were near to administration in 2010 too, but the club was sold to Milan Mandaric for just £1. That kind of deal isn't remotely on the table this time.

Who is Dejphon Chansiri?

Chansiri is the Thai businessman who is the owner of Sheffield Wednesday, yet next to nothing is known about how he funds the club or his background. He is part of the family that owns Thai Union Group, the world's largest producer of tuna and seafood, yet he has no role on the board of the company.

TUG branding was present for a brief period when Chansiri bought the club from Mandaric in 2015, but it quickly disappeared.

Wednesday enjoyed two years of success at the start of Chansiri's reign, coming close to a Premier League return when they lost in the 2016 playoff final to Hull City. But those years also saw huge overspending, and a failure to transfer players on for a profit, which would eventually come back to bite Chansiri hard.

Chansiri's autocratic style of ownership means he takes every decision -- there is no director of football, no chief executive, no one in the U.K. who takes ultimate responsibility for the day-to-day running of the club, which has added to the perception of a rudderless ship.

Dejphon Chansiri bought Sheffield Wednesday from Milan Mandaric in 2015. Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images

So what is the problem at Sheffield Wednesday?

How long have you got? There's a book to be written, and a long one at that, about what has gone on behind the scenes at Hillsborough.

The first sign of real issues came in July 2020 when the club were deducted 12 points for breaching profit and sustainability rules (PSR). The written reasons showed that Chansiri had failed to sign a vital document on time to sanction the sale of Hillsborough, the club's ground, to another company in his name, and that caused the PSR breach. The deduction was reduced to six points on appeal, but Wednesday were relegated to League One on goal difference.

Since then have been a few times when the club have been late making key payments, but this year it has come to a head and the club's very existence is now under threat. And this isn't even the complete list:

- Chansiri has failed to pay players and staff (including those who work in departments like the club shop and the ticket office) on time and in full in March, May, June and July.

- In June, the EFL placed a triple transfer embargo on the club for a failure to pay the players. After this, further embargoes followed after Chansiri was late paying the tax bill, and there remain outstanding transfer fees to other clubs.

- The multiple late wages meant that under FIFA rules key players were able to serve notice to rip up their contracts and leave on a free transfer. Josh Windass, who scored 13 goals in the Championship last season (only four players scored more), walked away to join Wrexham, while Michael Smith, scorer of eight goals, quit for Preston North End.

- Wednesday had to transfer other key players to pay the outstanding bills. This included 21-year-old winger Djeidi Gassama to Rangers for a reported £2.2 million -- way below his true transfer value. Gassama scored in his first two appearances for Rangers -- both legs of the Champions League qualifier against Panathinaikos.

- Highly rated coach Danny Röhl, who was in dispute with Chansiri throughout 2025, left by "mutual consent" on July 29. The German wanted to move to a new club, but Chansiri reportedly wouldn't negotiate on the compensation clause in his contract. Most of Röhl's staff left at the same time -- other than assistant Henrik Pedersen, who was named the new coach.

- The club's North Stand, which holds 9,000 supporters (many of them season-ticket holders who have paid for a seat for every league game) and carries Chansiri's name, has been closed by the local council. Chansiri had failed to carry out crucial safety work on the roof of the stand, meaning it has been deemed unsafe and cannot be used.

- Wednesday have 16 senior players remaining (only one goalkeeper, with a defender long-term injured). Of the 16, some have reportedly followed the lead of Smith and Windass and served notice to leave after failing to be paid for July.

- Wednesday have no senior coaching staff and have played no preseason friendlies ahead of Sunday's Championship opener at Leicester.

Sheffield Wednesday's North Stand, adorned with Chansiri's name, has been closed after urgent repairs were not carried out. Scott Llewellyn | MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images

What is the EFL doing about it?

When Chansiri took charge, there was nothing to suggest the club would be where it is 10 years on; the EFL doesn't have a crystal ball to predict the future when it approves a takeover. But at the same time, Wednesday fans feel like they have been abandoned by the league as the situation grows ever more serious.

The league has made only one statement, on June 18, when it issued charges against the club and Chansiri for the late payments. Since then, while there has been a meeting with the club's supporters' group there has been no official comment to suggest action is being taken.

The EFL has no ability to take control of the club or force Chansiri to sell it, but it can put pressure on to expedite a sale -- often by threatening expulsion from the league. It's the route that finally saw Chinese businessman Dai Yongge sell Reading in May. However, the EFL has no power to make Chansiri sell, and he could just allow the club to fold.

This will change when the new independent regulator for English football begins to operate, but that could be too late for Wednesday.

But could Wednesday really go out of existence?

This is the big question, and a lot will depend on Chansiri's ability to fund the club for the whole season. That he hasn't managed to pay players or staff for three consecutive months points either to serious cashflow issues, or that he has simply removed his funding. The latter would be more concerning, as it would suggest he has no need to sell the club below his reported personal valuation of £100 million -- a figure he has no realistic chance of achieving.

The EFL knows how bad it will look if a club the size of Wednesday go under, so it seems unlikely drastic action will be taken which would see them fail to start the season -- as was the case with Bury (who eventually went out of business) in 2019.

The situation is perhaps more comparable with another former Premier League club, Bolton Wanderers. Also in 2019, Bolton were allowed to start the campaign and played their opening fixtures with a squad largely made up of young players until a sale of the club went through a few weeks later. At least in Bolton's case there appeared to be the prospect of a takeover.

Another the key issue is that Chansiri has separated the ground from the club in that botched attempt to avoid PSR charges, and it seems unlikely a deal will be possible unless both are included.

Could the players go on strike?

After the July wages failed to arrive last Thursday, Wednesday's players refused to play a behind-closed-doors friendly with Premier League club Burnley at the weekend.

Captain Barry Bannan, who signed a new contract last week despite the turmoil, says he expects the troubled club to fulfil their opening Championship fixture away to Leicester.

However, the players issued a joint statement on Monday that said they "stand together in support with all our colleagues" and that action must be taken so that "decisions taken like the one not to play at Burnley are avoided in the future." Striking for a competitive fixture would be a last resort, but it clearly cannot be ruled out.

What has been the fans' response?

Understandably, there is despair that every day appears to bring more bad news. Supporters have been protesting against Chansiri's ownership for several months, but it will now be ramped up as the club lurches close to disaster.

A protest is planned for the Leicester game, which is live on television around the world, when fans won't take their seats until the fifth minute -- leaving an empty away end with an anti-Chansiri banner.

Further protests are planned at home fixtures, when one the biggest stands will remain empty -- and facing the television cameras -- until Chansiri funds repairs. Fans have also removed their funding of club merchandise to starve Chansiri of that revenue stream.

Sheffield Wednesday fans protest during a game against Leeds United last season. George Wood/Getty Images

What happens next at Wednesday?

With Chansiri in Thailand, and failing to engage with players, staff or supporters, there will be an air of inertia until the situation is resolved. The only way out of this appears to be the sale of the club, but that doesn't seem to be close and will require Chansiri lowering his demands.

With a threadbare squad which has had its attacking quality stripped away, only 11 players over the age of 21 and the possibility of a points deduction for the charges laid in June, there is no hope of staying in the Championship.

Regardless of supporter protests, and EFL sanctions, the club's future lies in the hands of one man: Chansiri.

If a takeover does happen, the new owners will have to deal with the embargo, which means Wednesday can't sign players for a transfer fee until 2027. Whatever happens, reaching the Premier League again seems light-years away.

[Fulham Broadway 17,810]

Gooners 2-1 down 😀

[CucurellatheCat 23]

LOL arse n ol lost 3-2 and looked dismal

 

womp womppp

 

Chelsea conspiracy's on all the arsenal forums for the rest of the week no doubt hha

[CucurellatheCat 23]

Viktor Gyökeres completed just 4 passes in 60 minutes against Villarreal today.😆

[Special Juan 28,865]

James Maddison out for 6/7 months ACL

[CucurellatheCat 23]

8 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

James Maddison out for 6/7 months ACL

We need to sign this Simons lad and a defender sharpish then lol

[CucurellatheCat 23]

 

[Special Juan 28,865]

Spurs getting humped 4-0 by Bayern

[NikkiCFC 8,528]

 

[CucurellatheCat 23]

7 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

 

wtf amazing lol

Might not ever be back fully then, if its the same injury 

 

[CucurellatheCat 23]

LOL utd were absolute dogsheet

[MoroccanBlue 5,408]

Always felt Rodri came back too soon

[Special Juan 28,865]

If I could send a voice note through here 

Hahhahahahhahahahahhahah Liverpool Fuck right off

[NikkiCFC 8,528]

3 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

If I could send a voice note through here 

Hahhahahahhahahahahhahah Liverpool Fuck right off

Going to Spain in good mood 😎 ⛱️ 

[Special Juan 28,865]

4 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

Going to Spain in good mood 😎 ⛱️ 

Mate, honestly, buzzing. Family happy and Chelsea win

[nyikolajevics 2,851]

Crystal Palace lost the appeal, it's official now they will play in Conference Leage instead of EL.

Feel sorry for them, they really earned their spot by winning FA-Cup. Hard to understand how two Red Bull team can play in the CL but Palace is disqualified due to multi-club ownership.

[Vesper 31,180]

The House of Glass and Iron

Buoyed by historic victory, Crystal Palace must move forward without the architect of their success: Dougie Freedman. Billy Carpenter investigates how the renowned talent-spotter transformed South London's pride

https://scoutedftbl.com/the-house-of-glass-and-iron/

 

The original Crystal Palace, quite literally “the biggest thing in London,” was built with over 293,000 panes of glass and 4,000 tons of iron. The sprawling complex stood as a crown jewel of Victorian engineering. First constructed for the Great Exhibition of 1851, it was later relocated to Sydenham Hill, where it stretched over a thousand feet across the ridge. Walt Whitman waxed poetic in the Song of the Exposition:

Around a palace, loftier, fairer, ampler than any yet,
Earth's modern wonder, history’s seven outstripping,
High rising tier on tier with glass and iron façades,
Gladdening the sun and sky…

But the elements that made it a marvel also made it vulnerable. On a windy November night in 1936, a small explosion in a cloakroom ignited, and over 100,000 people came to watch the Palace burn into nothing. Among the sad onlookers was Sir Henry Buckland, the property manager, who was holding hands with his little daughter. He’d named her Crystal.

The most beautiful things are often the most fragile.

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Triumph and fragility sit at the heart of the club which has the burned ruin's name.

From an outsider’s perspective, Crystal Palace F.C. have successfully become the Premier League’s most watchable overachievers, now entering a thirteenth straight season in the top flight and never finishing above 10th or below 15th. But real stability, or the lasting feeling of it at least, can prove evasive.

In mid-May, they enjoyed the greatest day in club history, an uproarious FA Cup final win over Manchester City. For the club that has flown a tifo that reads, “YOU GOT THE MONEY, WE GOT THE SOUL,” victory felt especially sweet.

Eberechi Eze seals history against Manchester City.

That trophy lift propelled them back to Wembley again, and yesterday they prevailed over the heavy-spending Liverpool. The difference in the club's respective Transfermarkt pages could hardly be more stark. Liverpool have spent nearly €300m on the likes of Wirtz, Ekitiké, Kerkez, and Frimpong. They’re not done, either: Isak links still float, as well as the potential signing of Palace’s own Marc Guéhi.

Palace’s total spend so far this summer? €2.30m. They prevailed nonetheless. But beneath the laurel wreaths, things still feel precarious.

A hunt-and-peck UEFA have banned Palace from the Europa League, citing John Textor’s stake in the club as a breach of multi-club ownership rules. Their spot is to be taken by Nottingham Forest, who would never, ever, ever, ever be involved in multi-club shenanigans, not ever. Textor has since sold his shares, but the club's appeal was today rejected.

It’s not the only complication Palace face. Wealthier clubs encircle their top talent with lavish offers, key transfers are again left late, and their prized manager, Oliver Glasner, has expressed frustrations with the club’s “passive” window, saying he was “promised that we would be more active and bring in the new players earlier this year.”

Woven through it all is the loss of one of their most valuable assets: today’s subject, club legend and renowned recruitment architect, Dougie Freedman.

Freedman has left one palace for the kind of money that could buy him his own.

After links to Manchester United and Newcastle, he accepted a surprising role at Al-Diriyah, a club recently promoted to the Saudi second-tier and owned by Diriyah Company, a firm backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).

Freedman’s reign with The Eagles carried many hallmarks of his treasured club: shoestring thriftiness, underdog mentality, flair, a true believer’s dedication to the unique culture surrounding Selhurst Park, and frequent brushes with the dramatic.

Palace began the final day of the 2000-01 season in 21st place, and essentially needed a win to avoid relegation from Division One. Leaving it to the 86th minute, Freedman delivered perhaps the most important goal in club history until that point.

Dougie Freedman: "Heartache, heartbreak, heart-make!"

Jonathan Pearce bellowed on Capital Gold Radio.

“Palace have taken the lead at Stockport County, they’re heading for safety in the dying seconds! Goodness me, what drama! The club that has cut it so close to the wire, so many times. Relegation, promotion and Wembley. Heartache, heartbreak, heart-make!”

---

A decade later, the threat wasn’t exclusion from this league or that cup. It was extinction. In 2010, Palace entered administration, were docked ten points (again raising the spectre of relegation from the Championship), and faced a 24-hour deadline before liquidation. In a last-ditch move, lifelong fan and advertising executive Steve Parish posted a 500-word message on a fan forum, outlining his plan to buy the club. The response was immediate.

“Within about five minutes of it reaching the fans' forum, it was on Sky Sports News, on the ticker at the top,” he recounted. “I thought: 'Wow. That's the power of football and the media.’”

3,000 supporters gathered outside Lloyds Bank on Gresham Street the next morning, as was documented in Where Eagles Dare, the wonderful docuseries on the club’s turnaround. Through tense, complicated talks, Parish’s consortium, CPFC 2010, secured the future of the club and stadium.

The outfit had other divine inheritances. The first was what Parish called “our number one piece of fortune”: local boy and future club legend Wilfried Zaha. Born in the Ivory Coast and raised in Croydon, Zaha joined Palace’s academy at age 8 and had just begun breaking into the first team at 17. His debut came in March 2010, at the tail end of the club’s administration-hit season. Within months, he’d become their brightest hope and, later, their most valuable asset.

Another inheritance? Freedman. The Scot, now the sixth-highest scoring player in club history, had already taken up a reserve-team coaching role while still suiting up. By March 2010, fully retired as a player, he was named assistant manager under Paul Hart during a desperate push to avoid relegation from the Championship. The brief was brutally simple: stay up. It came down to the final day of the season, and Palace clawed their way to a 2–2 draw that kept them up by a single point and sent Wednesday down.

Survival, again. And for Freedman, it was the start of a long and winding journey at the heart of Palace’s technical and strategic build.

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Freedman was kept on as assistant manager under George Burley the following season, but after an unremarkable year, it was clear a longer-term reset was needed. Parish made his big swing, targeting Eddie Howe for a fresh start. It looked like he’d found his manager. He got a reality check instead.

“I agreed everything with Eddie,” Parish recalled. “Then I woke up the next morning and he’d gone to Burnley. Obviously another little lesson about football.”

There was a silver lining.

“That really galvanised Dougie, who hadn’t really made representations up to that point. I remember, he demanded, ‘I need to see you. I know South London. I know these kids. I know how this place ticks. What we’re gonna try and do is difficult to impossible, but I think we can. And I think I can.’”

A flair player in his day, Freedman brought a mix of expressive instinct and technocratic pragmatism to his new role. Alongside Parish, he began shaping a club ethos around developing young players, bargain-hunting, and prioritising cultural fit. His first campaign as manager in 2011/12 was stable but forgettable. His second was anything but.

The 2012/13 side just clicked. Freedman found a core: Zaha’s young brilliance meshed with other club icons like Julian Speroni, Mile Jedinak, and Joel Ward, not to mention the throwback nine’ing of Glenn Murray, the unpredictability of Yannick Bolasie, and the pure solidity of so many others. For once, it was about more than survival.

Then came the inevitable twist. Midway through the season, with the team flying, Freedman took the Bolton job. To say it stunned the fanbase would be an understatement. Looking back, he doesn’t hide his regret.

“My circle of influence was wrong at the time. I was too impatient and I didn’t know what I had,” he said in an interview for the documentary. “I knew I made the wrong decision very quickly into my Bolton career. But it was a decision I made. And regrettably, it was the wrong decision.”

Under Ian Holloway, there were early successes, but eventually, a cold period took root as Holloway tried to impose a more expansive brand of football. Pivoting back to more Freedman-esque tactics, the team rebounded and made the play-off.

Zaha, the other great Parish inheritance, had already signed for Manchester United, and was desperate to provide a parting gift. In the playoff semifinal against Brighton, he scored twice in the second half to carry Palace to Wembley.

Wilfried Zaha scores to send Palace to Wembley.

In the final, Zaha won the penalty that sent them to the Premier League.

He wouldn’t be gone from the club long, and in truth, his influence still saturates everything.

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It would be a longer period, five long years, before Freedman and Palace crossed paths again.

Bygones firmly bygones, he returned as Sporting Director in August 2017.

“Looking back, of course I wouldn’t have went,” he said. “I would have stayed here, and we would have had promotion [together]. And it’s probably one of the things that drives me on now: to make up for that disappointing decision I made.”

In this fourth act, Freedman would rebuild his reputation, not just as a club figure, but as one of the most discerning talent evaluators in the game. And he did it in some unique, frugal ways that made him the envy of many clubs across Europe.

So what did define Palace’s recruitment model under Freedman? What made it different? And where does it go from here?

The Freedman playbook

It’s tempting to reduce Freedman to “the guy who buys well from the Championship.” And sure, that has a lot of truth to it. But the reality is more interesting.

Above all else, every successful football operation starts with a sense of coherent identity and vision. To use a business school-type quote (kill me) that is often attributed to Michael Eisner, but I can’t find good sourcing on:

“A brand is a living entity; it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.”

We tend to think of an entity’s “brand” as a logo or a marketing campaign. But it isn’t what you say it is; it’s what others say it is. And from a recruitment point of view, it’s reflected in the leagues you scout, how you negotiate, how you treat your players, your relationships writ large, your pathways, your play-style, and a million quiet decisions that add up to form a prevailing impression in the market. That identity starts with the reputation of ownership, and gets reinforced by the day-in, day-out choices of the sporting operation.

“Everything at Palace’s training ground goes back to [Freedman],” one source told The Athletic in a wonderful piece by Matt Woosnam. “From the security to the canteen staff, sports science, everyone, he has full control of everyone in the building. It all goes through him. It’s almost like Alex Ferguson — I think that is probably his mentor.” Freedman built a modern football department in his own image: streamlined, data-literate, and obsessively hands-on.

That does seem to imply that this is a sizable void to fill.

That report details how, since his return in 2017, one of the most important structural changes has been the unification of recruitment and analytics. The staff has doubled by last count; academic backgrounds are preferred; emotion is deliberately stripped out of the early evaluation stages.

All of this culminates in a recruitment year like this, one of the more impressive in recent memory:

What principles underpin this kind of success? And what can we learn from it?

Looking through the transfer record, not to mention every article and interview I could find, I tried to group patterns and reverse-engineer the strategy from there.

Here are seven pillars of Freedman-style recruitment.

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1. Take quality shots (and avoid stupidity)

It’s an analogy. Bear with me.

As you probably know, one of the most reliable indicators of a result is the difference in the shot quality of the respective teams. See this, from Soccerment:

Per that research:

The correlation goes up to R² values of 0.56 and 0.55 for xGD and xPoints, respectively. This result is quite remarkable, implying that more than half of the variation in team performance can be explained with their shot quality relative to their opponents.

You’ll see the impact of this in leagues worldwide. Almost everywhere, teams are passing up higher-quantity, more spurious chances for better-worked shots. It’s worth repeating: half of team performance can be explained by that statistic.

Quality, not quantity.

When we covered Palace’s hated rivals Brighton back in 2023, we talked about their frequent, yet considered bets in the market, a Goldilocks model of squad size that was neither too big nor too small, but just right. I thought they worked these levers perfectly, and contrasted nicely to some of the bloat that existed with clubs like Forest back then.

Especially with loan rules changing, I’ve since argued that Brighton have now shifted too closely to a “spray and pray” model, in which they’re still signing great talents, but are having more trouble ensuring stable pathways and minutes for each of them. To me, this threatens their central selling proposition: “Come here, you will play the right amount of minutes to grow, it will be in a modern style of football, and you will get the jump you crave.” There’s context for all, but players from Gruda to Wieffer to Kadıoğlu to Ferguson didn’t necessarily get that experience last year. Any player offered this summer has to have a glimmer of doubt.

I wouldn’t doubt their ability to readjust, but inefficiency has crept in.

In that piece, we quoted some of the famed investor Charlie Munger’s “elementary, worldly wisdom,” including this nugget:

“The idea that very smart people with investment skills should have hugely diversified portfolios is madness. It’s a very conventional madness. And it’s taught in all the business schools. But they’re wrong.”

This is where we get closer to the Palace model:

“I think part of the popularity of Berkshire Hathaway is that we look like people who have found a trick,” Munger said in 2010. “It's not brilliance. It's just avoiding stupidity.”

And so:

• Avoid dumb stuff.
• Remember that shot quality, more than quantity, wins.

Freedman has instilled these virtues at Crystal Palace.

In the period since Freedman had his first full summer in charge (2018/19), up until his last window, Crystal Palace have made the fewest total moves of all teams who have appeared in the Premier League, equal with Liverpool (133).

Palace have the 23rd-most arrivals of all teams in this list, and the fewest total departures.

This is not a model built on churn.

The spending reflects it. Since Freedman returned as Sporting Director, Palace have spent €333.77 million, good for 19th in the league. That’s less than half of what Brighton have shelled out. It’s behind Leeds, Fulham, Forest, Southampton. And unlike those clubs, Palace have stayed up every season.

Their total outgoing sales over that period add up to €181.88 million, good for 23rd in the division, and behind the likes of Norwich and Watford.

When they do spend, they pick their moments. The most expensive signing in club history technically remains Christian Benteke at €31.2 million, before Freedman was involved.

The right model for one club is not the right model for every club. Brighton have found success by spreading their bets, working quickly across a diverse network, knowing they’ll actively sell, and acknowledging the impossibility of achieving “certainty” with something as complex as young football players. But for Palace, this patience, frugality, and simple lack of ‘panic buys’ then turns into a series of their own compounding advantages.

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2. Screen for Crystal Palace DNA

Freedman wasn’t only concerned with “Is he good?” He was just as concerned with “Is he one of ours?” Freedman knows what “one of ours” looks like because he’s done almost everything at Palace. As one source said:

“He has the ability to visualise a Palace player rather than a good player who is not necessarily good for Palace.”

The sentiment was echoed by Patrick Vieira:

“This is one of the strengths of the football club: the Sporting Director who played at a high level, who understands the game, who understands the club and understands the demands of the fans.”

That knowledge is baked into the process, and the culture is weaponised in negotiations. The Athletic reported that when recruiting wingers, staff may show clips of Wayne Routledge and Yannick Bolasie, and show how the faithful rewarded their expressiveness and flair.

Above all else, Freedman seems to have a humility filter. “Dougie is not only big on talent, but on mentality and attitude,” said one agent. “He extensively checks out the people he’s going to sign beforehand. He tends to avoid players he might think are a big-time Charlie.”

You can see the pattern. Eberechi Eze was released by both Arsenal and Millwall. Michael Olise had several failed auditions; it didn’t ultimately work out with Arsenal, Manchester City, or Chelsea. Both are internally motivated players. Marc Guéhi captained England’s under-21s. Joachim Andersen and Cheick Doucouré had mature qualities coming in.

Palace supporter Mark Silverstein summed it up in 2021. “Clearly there are exceptions but many of Dougie’s recruits have had a character that is both steely but also human and relatable as people at the same time … When I think of our more recent recruitment: Eze, Guehi, Gallagher, Andersen and even going back to Kouyate and Guaita, each have that same mixture of decency and determination.”

The lesson, as I see it, is to be as specific as possible about what makes your club’s culture different from others. When describing the players you want, it’s easy to turn it into a list of universal traits: all the good characteristics, none of the bad ones. Genius! But that’s not decisive enough. You have to identify your priorities, be honest about what you’re willing to sacrifice in pursuit of them, and clearly articulate why those choices fit your operation in particular. This creates self-perpetuating benefits because players can more readily understand why they should choose your club, without even talking to you.

For Palace, that appears to be players who are a) humble, b) physical, and c) expressive on the pitch.

A slight chip on the shoulder doesn’t hurt.

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3. Run a consistent methodology

In Mind Games, we explored the psychological traps that lead to poor talent evaluation, ranging from projection to bias to noise. To find solutions, one of the fields we borrowed from was behavioural economics. Max Bazerman, a long-time researcher in the space, developed a six-step framework for better decisions; though originally for business, it maps neatly onto scouting.

• Define the Problem: Identify the problem to be solved by a specific player search, and how the search will align with the longer-term vision.
• Identify the Criteria: Establish simple, yet precisely-worded criteria for assessment, which may encompass simple data, proprietary methods, and/or “intuitive” measures.
• Weigh the Criteria: From there, the relative importance to each criterion can be weighed based on its agreed-upon relevance.
• Generate Alternatives: Undertake the widest search possible for analysis – through means both technological (software) and human (reading, networking, travel) – and develop a system for “flagging” or “shortlisting” players for the deepest analysis.
• Rate Each Alternative on Each Criterion: Based on clear definitions, assign ratings to each criterion, and agree on how respective data and scouting metrics should be tallied.
• Compute the Overall Score: Aggregate the rankings.

This is where data is so useful, and especially efficient at earlier stages when conducting wide searches. The simple reason is that there are so many fucking players, more than you can imagine, and you could be looking past them for any number of questionable reasons.

“Data analysis is 1,000 percent more efficient than traditional scouting, where you’ve got to drive somewhere or catch a plane, to see someone play for 90 minutes… and then they might not even play, or they’ll play in a different position or formation to what you’re looking for,” said former Burnley technical director Mike Rigg, who is now the academy manager at Birmingham. “And then you might see their best ever game, or their worst.”

To counteract this, Freedman empowered the nerds. From that Athletic article:

Academic backgrounds are prized, unsurprisingly given Freedman’s preference for the initial recruitment process to be entirely data led, with emotion removed from the process.

In Mind Games, we covered how having a deliberate set of questions, a gut-check list if you will, is important for eliminating the silly biases that cloud our judgements.

A comprehensive approach to scouting demands asking critical questions: Are we aware of the right players? Are we inadvertently favouring certain groups? Are we giving fair consideration to a player's circumstances and background? Does our evaluation account for individualism? Are we misunderstanding the player due to their age or body? Are we being swayed by simple, pointy visual cues? And so on.

Freedman and Palace have taken that a step further: they methodically go through 29 data-led questions for every possible signing, leading to their shortlist.

From there…

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4. Eyeballs make the call

Freedman trusts his own eyes. The Times notes that he “watches about 150 matches a year around the world” and, predictably, made personal scouting trips to Blackburn Rovers specifically to evaluate Adam Wharton before pushing to sign him for £18 million in January 2024; before signing Marc Guéhi, he watched him 15 to 20 times. Data has its place, but the eye test isn’t outsourced, or considered outdated. It takes the decision across the finish line.

In-person viewing adds layers that numbers can’t. You can better see body language under pressure, how a player anticipates space, how their intensity changes late in games. You also catch social cues, interactions with teammates and staff, even how they carry themselves around the club.

This groundwork was laid with Wharton. Now one of the most sought-after midfielders in the world and an English international, Freedman spotted him early.

“Funnily enough, it was after my first Championship start which would have been late August, early September of 2022,” Wharton remembers. “Dougie [Freedman] was actually at that game, my manager told me. There was interest but I was never going to move at that time or anything.”

This focus on in-person scouting carries that added bonus: it shows a player how much you care.

“[It’s] like an incentive for me that I was a player that they were invested in, in a way,” he continued. “They were spending all that time interested. It wasn’t just a little impulse. So that was a factor that I took in to sort of help me make my decision.”

Welcome to the Wharton age

Introducing Adam Wharton: the low-socked Blackburn prodigy on growing up, his developing England career, and how Busquets and Frenkie shape his game.

This process takes time, but it raises the certainty of the final call. By watching more and being around the player more, you fill in the gaps. You reduce the risk of personal or behavioural issues that can derail a signing.

The tradeoff is that it’s manual and slow. Sometimes a deal falls apart while you're waiting for one more look. Palace have been willing to live with that.

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5. Narrow markets = compounding benefits

As we’ve covered, data can get a player in the door, but the eye test gets them a contract offer. The problem with the eye test is that it’s not as scalable as analytics. So if you value it, but you have finite time, staff, and budget, you must narrow the aperture.

Romain Esse is a recent example. I got really intrigued with him at Millwall; his skill and work-rate impressed me. As I sang his praises, I wrote “TL;DR: I will be a little jealous on the inevitable Palace swoop.” You’ll never believe what happened next. (You will: he signed with Palace.) That’s what we call a strong brand.

It’s easy to see how a deal came together. Young talent from that level knows what Palace are cooking: they had a track record of integration, clear role models, and a structure that didn’t chew you up.

This also factored with Wharton. He has some of the deft touches, spray passes, and feel for the game that the top clubs in the world crave; the only question now is whether they can afford him. Here’s the thing, though: these qualities were always apparent, and he was always sought after. But aside from the time Freedman put in, he also went to Palace because Eze, Olise, and Guehi had already shown him the way: a clear path to stable minutes from the Championship. The fee of £18 million (potentially rising to £22 million) hardly feels sufficient now.

The long game also paid off with Olise. Celebrating the attacker as the first signing in his managerial reign, Patrick Vieira talked about this recurring theme.

“We’ve known him quite well because he’s a player the football club have been following for a long time,” said Vieira. “There were some big challenges, and to sign him, I think, is credit to Dougie [Freedman] and his staff.”

Becoming an expert in certain markets has, I’ll say it again, compounding benefits. Freedman and his team got to know the Championship inside out, dating back to his time as a player. That meant not just identifying standout talents, but better understanding their roles, maturity, personality, and system fit. It meant knowing which clubs coached and scaled well, the tactical permutations and heritage of them, the little bits of context that only experts can know. You can also “double up” your scouting trips, more easily checking out multiple players at once. Palace could avoid obvious traps, and often lay groundwork before the rest of the market caught up.

There is particular expertise in players who find themselves in that English Pyramid Limbo and are looking for stability. Freedman routinely looked for young players who had been stuck in deeper squads, like Guéhi, Conor Gallagher, Trevoh Chalobah, and recently Ben Chilwell from Chelsea. Lurking around Cobham is always a winning strategy. But it also applies to the likes of Will Hughes from Watford and Sam Johnstone from West Brom. The clarity of the performance data and the local expertise make them more knowable qualities than you can find elsewhere.

France has rounded this picture out.

Cheick Doucouré and Joachim Andersen (who came from Lyon, via Fulham) fit the model: well-schooled, physically ready, tactically teachable. Patrick Vieira himself qualifies, of course.

Maxence Lacroix, the 25-year-old defensive fulcrum from France, came with a glowing character reference.

Lacroix was 21 when he was made captain at Wolfsburg by Glasner, who was adamant he was the ideal replacement in the middle of Palace’s back three after the sale of Joachim Andersen to Fulham last summer. It has proved to be a shrewd move because Lacroix’s ability on the ball and recovery speed have complemented the attributes of Guéhi and Richards.

The objective isn’t to find the most talented player, period. It’s to find the best player for your unique, well-defined environment. Whenever you have an information asymmetry on your opponents (through data, scouting, or in-depth knowledge of a region), you reap the rewards.

If you can’t go wider, go deeper.

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6. Be intense about intensity

The Premier League’s intensity levels continue to spike year-on-year.

This SkillCorner graph we shared last year shows how the demands stack up to the others.

This has contributed to a more end-to-end style of play, with the smallest time spent in the middle third of any of the top-five leagues.

Players are now performing more high-intensity actions and hitting higher peak sprint speeds than ever before. The baseline for physical output is getting astronomically taxing. That helps explain the types of players clubs are targeting, and Palace have been no different.

According to Opta, Palace had the fourth-lowest possession (42.8%), the fourth-highest direct speed, and the second-quickest sequences in the league.

Palace also ranked 3rd in the league last season for percentage of distance covered at high intensity, according to Hudl.

The last window helped this considerably.

One standout is Daniel Muñoz. The Colombian right-back joined from Genk in Belgium, seemingly an unlikely source for Palace recruitment. But he had that pluckiness and undervalued-ness that Freedman craves, as a cheap, 27-year-old late bloomer. He also, fittingly, had a character reference as Jefferson Lerma’s teammate on the national team. Lerma remarked that “Croydon is Colombia.”

He had something else: an extreme engine. He was in the highest tier for high-intensity actions and direct runs among full-backs last season:

That’s backed by what we’ve seen: a relentless hunger, smart timing, and consistent threat down the flank. His ability to repeat sprints and disrupt shape is core to Palace’s wide-overload patterns, and fits perfectly with a league trending toward chaos and transition. It also helped lead to Palace’s best moment.

“Every session he’s the guy running the most, sprinting the most,” Glasner said earlier this season. “Every game, he plays with the most intensity. It’s the wish of every manager to have such a player.”

Lacroix, meanwhile, is one of the faster centre-backs in Europe, routinely hitting speeds over 35 km/h at Wolfsburg. Palace signed him in part to defend in space, recover in transition, and drive forward with the ball.

Then there’s the case of Ismaïla Sarr, who factored into both goals in the Community Shield. It’s another tale about how playing the long game, and knowing regions on a deep level, can pay dividends.

The Guardian recently outlined the long tail of interest, tracing it all the way back to Freedman clocking him as a teenager just breaking through at Metz. Sarr had just arrived from Génération Foot, and clearly left an early impression. Consistently described as quiet and humble, he was priced out of a potential move to Palace by Watford, then endured a difficult spell at Marseille, where he reportedly didn’t enjoy his time much at all. Freedman and his staff stayed on the case. Once Michael Olise’s move to Bayern was confirmed, Sarr instantly became target number one.

What’s striking in The Guardian’s account is how few clubs were seriously in for him, despite the versatile, hard-working profile that fits the current Premier League meta. At only €15m, that gap in the market became Palace’s gain. Sarr took over Olise’s No. 7 shirt, and despite a quiet opening stretch, became one of the most valuable wingers for his team in the league. Internally, he was described as “an absolute warrior,” one of those players who’s always sore but never misses a session. Glasner said it plainly: “He has great physicality like a sprinter combined with technical ability. This always helps to score goals.”

So the data paints a clear picture. Teams like Palace are making sharper bets on physical profiles that can survive and thrive in the most physically demanding league in the world. High-intensity runners like Muñoz, fast recovery defenders like Lacroix, and speedy wingers like Sarr are helping usher in a period of scary intensity.

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7. Patience is only worth anything when it’s hard

Patience always gets lip service in peacetime. But when form dips, fans are calling for signings, the manager is frustrated, and the window’s closing, the chips are on the table. After some hard-won lessons on this front, Palace have held the line as a matter of course.

Freedman returned during a turbulent stretch. Frank de Boer had been hired a little earlier, with players like Jaïro Riedewald being signed specifically for him. What followed was near-calamity: a few weeks in, Palace were 19th, with no wins and no goals. De Boer lasted 77 days. Everything at that time, from tactics to recruitment, felt disarmingly short-term. Even Alexander Sørloth, Freedman’s marquee signing that January, got a fairly quick hook. He made all of four league starts for the club.

Palace learned from that. Their methodical pace now can feel like true laboriousness. Just ask Glasner. They don’t buy to flip, they don’t have a particularly impressive sales record, and they don’t cycle players to fund the next wave. They wait, and they avoid big mistakes.

There’s a cost. As The Times reported:

“The club’s recent head coaches Tony Pulis, Roy Hodgson and Oliver Glasner have all been frustrated that signings were done at the end of transfer windows as Parish wanted to cut better deals.”

But it’s all by design.

Jean-Philippe Mateta is a good example. He joined on loan in January 2021, scored a flicked goal at Brighton a month later, but didn’t lock down a starting role for two years. His permanent move wasn’t confirmed until January 2022, and even in the 2022–23 season, he made just six league starts. He went nearly a year without a league goal.

Palace waited. In April 2023, he came off the bench to score a last-minute winner against Leicester, ending both the club’s 13-match winless run and his own 28-game drought. The next season, he was Player of the Year. Then came the FA Cup win. His hold-up play was crucial to the decisive goal.

You see the same arc with others. Michael Olise didn’t start right away. Joachim Andersen took time to play his best. Odsonne Édouard got a long look. Even Riedewald, that player who signed to reunite with De Boer, stayed around for seven seasons.

Next up? Eddie Nketiah, who had a modest first season with Palace, thanks in no small part to Mateta’s star turn. It wouldn’t surprise anybody if he had a delayed breakout.

That slower pace sends a message: if we’re not moving on quickly from you, we expect you to stay and fight. For incoming players, it means they’re not signing up to be churned through a system. There’s a real shot to grow, to prove it, and to belong. In a league (and world) built on immediacy, Palace play the long game.

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…but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows

It absolutely, positively doesn’t always work out. Footballers are too complex, and variables pop up too frequently. While the risk profile is generally low, Freedman still has his share of misses, and a few help tell that wider story.

Alexander Sørloth came from a lesser league, had good numbers, passed the eye test, and has banged since (go look up his per-90 numbers from last year if you’re bored). But he may have arrived at the wrong time, too early, and not ready to use that big body of his; or he may have been a cautionary tale about the risks of impatience and unclear pathways for a young player like him. I imagine if Freedman signed Sørloth later in his tenure, he’d have ensured a wider berth like Mateta got.

Later, Odsonne Édouard got plenty of time after a similarly exciting move, having racked up goals for Celtic, but never reached that next level Palace craved.

More recently, Matheus França felt like a surprising Palace transfer. Hailing from Brazil, he wasn’t in one of the core markets and arrived for a big fee by Palace standards, especially for a 19-year-old: €20 million. It even had a €5m add-on if França is nominated for the Ballon d’Or (remember, all add-ons are not created the same).

Freedman apparently scouted him for some time and pushed for the deal, but it hasn’t been a rousing success just yet. It may be a simple case of injuries; it may just be a reminder to not judge too soon. But it may also be a case of jumping for a player with too much uncertainty attached: particularly a less-assured league transition, and limited time against senior players.

Another was Naouirou Ahamada. A product of Juventus Next Gen, Ahamada is a good athlete, is French, showed flashes in Germany for Stuttgart, and was likely data-flagged. But he hasn’t asserted himself in a crowded midfield. My estimation (more of a guess, really) is that this move was a little too clever, trying to get ahead of a player before they blow up. But he just hasn’t had enough game time to generate certainty, and has still only played about 2,000 senior minutes.

Despite some of the outward-facing stability elsewhere, the technical area has been a place of tumult at times. After the De Boer era, Hodgson brought stability and survival, but things got a little static. Vieira came in to play more progressively, but the second season turned cautious and toothless, going 12 games without a win. Then Hodgson came back, and many fans saw it as a step backward, with the poor man dealing with health issues to boot. The attacking stats were woeful, and some of the players weren’t developing.

It led to more tifos:

• “Wasted potential on and off the pitch. Weak decisions taking us backwards,”
• “No shared vision. No structured plan. Parish out. Yanks out.”

It all changed under Glasner, when the tactics and recruitment finally started to rhyme.

Mistakes are the price of doing business. Palace’s success rate seems lower when there’s less clarity, whether due to inexperience, unfamiliar markets, or when the usual model (based on patience) can’t be followed through. The misses are also disproportionately impactful compared to other teams, because the quantity of total signings is so low. But when they stick to their process, including narrow markets, clear identity filters, long-term bets, and deep research, the hit rate stays high.

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Life after Dougie

The cup run was monumental. The Community Shield was a cherry on top.

These were rousing validations of the Palace project. It was the hungry, carefully-scouted players who delivered the club’s first major trophy: Eberechi Eze scored the final’s only goal, Dean Henderson saved a penalty, and quintessential Palace signings like Jean-Philippe Mateta, Ismaïla Sarr, and Daniel Muñoz played starring roles.

Glasner earned credit for transforming the team’s playing identity, but he also acknowledged what he inherited. It echoed what Patrick Vieira had said years earlier, crediting a recruitment team that knew what kind of player would fit the club. That shared vision, the alignment between recruitment and coaching, is the secret ingredient of any successful club. It is especially true at Palace.

That brings us to the present, and the void left by Dougie Freedman. For all his understated style, Freedman built something unique: a recruitment model that was smart, thrifty, patient, and distinct to the club and fanbase. He’d saved the club from relegation on the final day as a player, pulled the club out of the bottom of the Championship in a promotion campaign, and has now helped engineer the first major trophy in club history. His status as a club legend gave him the credibility to see a vision through, even when resources were limited and things felt weird and slow. The tactics and the transfers began to strengthen one another. Players arrived from narrow pools of trusted markets. Pathways were usually clear. The team slowly built value without blowing the budget.

Look around, and the difficulty of that job comes into focus. West Ham cycled through expensive forwards, and scattergun recruitment, with little to show. Countless others have struggled to stay in the top-flight. Even a club like Brighton, whose model is widely admired, has its trade-offs: constant churn, a feeling of everything being temporary, and a need to sell that sometimes clashes with fan ambitions.

Vast uncertainty awaits. Success is not assured.

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What’s next?

A few things come to mind as Palace step into the post-Freedman beyond.

• Keep the markets (and the signings) fairly narrow. Palace gain an edge by identifying fewer players from fewer regions, which helps maintain their identity and keeps pathways clear. The Championship, France, and maybe one or two South American markets should be the sweet spots.
• Taking over Freedman’s early, in-person eye-testing role, and building those relationships along the way, feels like the toughest job to replace. It’s hard to overstate how many of these stories include an early, meaningful Freedman scouting trip. Filling that gap will take real work.
• Increasingly target athletic robustness. Players like Sarr, Muñoz, and Lacroix settled in quickly for a reason. If need be, they’ll also attract interest from bigger clubs for that same reason.
• Keep mining Chelsea’s development castoffs, where value still exists.
• Never lose the flair. Zaha, Eze, and Freedman himself represent a through-line in the club’s identity. The right kind of player will want to carry that forward.
• Marginally speed up sales. As it stands, the speed often goes past “methodical” to just plain slow. Quicker decisions and more proactive exits can come without becoming a stepping-stone club.
• Palace have probably had too much turnover in the technical area over the years. That kind of instability leads to inefficiency: players bought for managers who’ve since left, inconsistent game models across the academy, and so on. Regardless of how long Glasner stays, I’d commit to his approach more broadly: lower possession, higher physicality, transitions, flair, and maybe even loosely committing to the 3-4-3 shape (where you can find value). When the playing style has bounces around a bit from manager to manager, the recruitment becomes less durable. This play-style fits with the wider heritage.
• And lastly: the academy. I don’t have the best visibility here. Players like Tyrick Mitchell got real chances, but it also feels a bit slow at the moment. If Palace can graduate one or two players every couple years, they’ll reduce transfer pressure and reinforce the club’s culture from within. That might be the biggest untapped advantage left.

Freedman’s gone again, but the imprint remains. Same with Zaha and a long list of others. We can credit what they built without reducing it to a tidy “great man” fable; so many have contributed to what exists today.

This is a club that, for all its recent success, still feels human-sized. Its victories have come from discipline, clarity, oft-beautiful play, and a stubborn defiance. It’s a place where even the triumphant moments feel fragile, threats still linger around the bend, but where a dogged persistence has carried them through.

Glass and iron. This Crystal Palace is still standing.