Crystal Palace revert to missionary under new manager after fling with grateful Sage
Pierre Sage announced he had achieved his “dream” upon arriving in the Premier League to manage Crystal Palace in the summer with far greater authenticity than thousands of other footballers or managers to have delivered the same cliched line.
After being named Ligue 1 manager of the season having run Paris Saint-Germain implausibly close in the title race as Lens boss, Sage was asked about his decision to leave a team set for a seat at the top table of European football for a mid-table Premier League club.
“When people tell me, ‘You are not going to play the Champions League,’ I answer, ‘No, but I will play the Champions League every weekend in the Premier League.’”
It’s not lasted nearly as long as he would have liked. With Palace bottom of the Premier League on seven points from their opening ten games, Sage has been relieved of his duties at Selhurst Park.
Like Michael Carrick’s dismissal at Manchester United, it had been coming.
Palace have conceded the most goals (24) this season season, which is more than they’ve shipped in the first ten games of any league campaign since 1980/81. They’re bottom of the expected points table, have conceded the most shots (189), the most shots on target (62) and the most shots from inside the six-yard box (25).
The Palace chiefs were attracted by Sage’s more intense, attacking style of football having previously opted for more defensively-minded coaches, but they suffered through the Frenchman’s dogmatic belief that attack is the best form of defence as well as other factors beyond his control.
Palace sold Maxence Lacroix to Chelsea (£52m) and Daniel Munoz to Nottingham Forest (£22m) in a scramble to meet UEFA’s squad cost ratio rules and the 11 players signed in the summer were a mixture of bargain-bin buys, loans and inexperienced young talent.
Chadi Riad was seriously injured against Everton on the opening day, while Jean-Philippe Mateta and Dean Henderson have both also spent significant time not the sidelines to leave Sage with a real lack of leaders in his side.
Succeeding Oliver Glasner was the most difficult challenge ever faced by an incoming Crystal Palace manager. The Austrian won them their first piece of major silverware and three trophies in total.
And while Sage felt like a natural progression on the basis of playing the same formation, it never felt like he had the same authority as his predecessor. Glasner arrived after a decade of management across spells at LASK, Wolfsburg and Frankfurt while Sage had less than three seasons of top job experience at Lyon and then Lens.
Landing Oliver Glasner was a coup for Palace after Roy Hodgson. Replacing Glasner with top summer target Andoni Iraola ahead of Liverpool would have been an even greater sign of their upward trajectory.
But Palace always felt like the more attractive half of a marriage with Sage, who couldn’t have been more grateful to be sharing a bed with an established Premier League team that just wasn’t ready for his moves or techniques after a summer of change.
Palace are now set to revert to missionary under Thomas Frank, who’s in ‘advanced talks’ to take charge and bring a functional but not pretty or particularly enjoyable style back to Selhurst Park to save them from relegation.
The fans valued Sage’s sincerity and backed him to the end and we suspect a manager with wisdom befitting his name will reflect on his time at Palace more with a sense of pride that he made it to the Premier League rather than with regret that it didn’t work out.
“I am coming to the conclusion the train will not pass again,” Sage said when revealing his decision to take the job, and insisted in his final press conference that “it’s not from the dream to the nightmare”.
