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Frank de Boer arrives with a point still to prove at Crystal Palace
It’s been a low-key summer so far for Crystal Palace, the usual tabloid nonsense has been flying about but without any firm conclusions to any transfer deals – hardly surprising given our notable lack of a manager. Even without a manager, when I say that there’s been no transfer movement that isn’t strictly true, one huge bit of business went through on the 1st of July and that involved the man, the myth… Zeki Fryers.
A quick glance at any social media was like slipping into a time portal. Twitter was awash with exactly the same comments I remember both making and hearing when Zeki initially joined Palace and they all followed the same pattern. “He’s played for Manchester United and Tottenham, he must have shown promise – surely he can’t be that bad?”. I really hope the answer to that question isn’t the same for Barnsley as it was for Crystal Palace.
Read More: Sam Allardyce departure plunges the Eagles back into uncertainty
Of course the big news in the last week wasn’t that we’d finally managed to offload a player that made as much impact as Florian Marange or Elliot Grandin, but instead, as the white smoke rose over the Jerk chicken shop, we had a new manager. Like most Palace fans I think, I was disappointed when Sam Allardyce left the club, he’d promised an assurance and steadfastness that has been lacking in the last few seasons. We’ve had success, but alongside it has come a steady stream of managers that have come and gone remarkably quickly, the changes bringing a degree of instability despite the best of intentions from the owners.
Allardyce, although a mid-season appointment, morphed into the antithesis of the upheaval at Palace. By the time survival was assured he had brought a calm to the club, a belief that under his guidance we could firmly establish ourselves as a Premier League club and enjoy a mediocre, but fantastically enjoyable, mid-table finish next season. Alas, it was not to be and so Steve Parish set about finding our 8th manager in 7 years.
If Allardyce was an improvement on what had gone before, then Frank de Boer is an even further departure from our immediate managerial history. With all due respect to figures such as Neil Warnock and Ian Holloway, their pedigree in the game doesn’t hold water against de Boer and Allardyce’s claim that had he been named “Allardici” he would be a top four manager should be taken with as much of a pinch of salt as manifesto commitments.
Much has been made of the strengths of de Boer, he is a living embodiment of the philosophy of ‘total football’ which dominated the Netherlands during the 70s in particular. He won 4 titles in 5 seasons with Ajax as well as enjoying a playing career that is head and shoulders above any other manager we have had in living memory. He strikes me as a student of the game, a thoughtful manager that understands that nobody will ever be the finished article withing nothing left to learn. Just seeing a man of Frank de Boer’s calibre stood with a Crystal Palace shirt is surreal.
It is imperative that we temper our excitement, however.
Could de Boer implement a fantastic style of play with Crystal Palace? In the long term, yes. With this group? More difficult. We saw Alan Pardew try to make this transition and ultimately it cost him his job. It’s also worth bearing in mind that de Boer’s profile as a player is far from a guarantee of success, his spell at Inter Milan proved he is far from infallible and we musn’t fool ourselves, he arrives at Crystal Palace with a point to prove.
With respect to the Eredivisie, he remains unproven in a large European league and while we may not be far off the financial clout of a club such as Inter or Ajax we are a long way off in terms of reputation and that’s why he’s taken on the Crystal Palace project. This is a very different challenge to the ones he’s had before and it was encouraging to see him articulating the fact that a slow start while he shapes the team won’t be good enough. He is a man who could help craft an identity that will last long beyond his reign, but also one who appears to be acutely aware of the perils of believing that we are ‘too good to go down’.
Don’t mistake my reservedness for negativity, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I cannot wait to see how the team evolves under his tutelage, the adaptation of his vision to Crystal Palace, but I am also aware of the dangers of being too single minded in the drive for a new identity. This feels like a monumental appointment that we could look back on with pride in a few years, but I also understand the reason he is here is to prove to the world that he can do it in the Premier League, with an unfashionable club from South London.
I look forward to watching him do just that.
