Premier League 2016-17 season grades: Crystal Palace
By Adam Stocker
Crystal Palace finished 14th in the Premier League in 2016-17, but what grade do they get for their overall performance?
Crystal Palace started the season with back-to-back 1-0 losses, as the attacking struggles that plagued them in 2015-16 continued. However, after the arrival of Christian Benteke, Palace collected 11 points over their next five matches and climbed as high as seventh in the table.
The Eagles stumbled after that, however, and had fallen to 17th in the table by the end of November. Alan Pardew’s seat was starting to get very hot. The club decided to fire Pardew two days before Christmas after they picked up only four points in their first four matches in December.
Sam Allardyce, newly available after getting sacked from the England job, was brought in as the replacement. The Englishman struggled at first, despite his sterling record when it comes to dragging teams out of the relegation battle. Palace picked up only four points in their first eight games under their new manager, and dropped to 19th in the table after an embarrassing 4-0 loss to last-place Sunderland on Feb. 4.
That marked something of a turning point, as Big Sam finally began to coax some improved performances out of his side. That owed much to the arrivals of Mamadou Sakho and Luka Milivojevic during the January transfer window, who helped lead the team on a four-match winning streak (part of a run of six wins in eight games) that ultimately kept the Eagles in the division.
Palace have the talent to aspire to a lot more than a 14th-place finish, and certainly shouldn’t have been in contention for relegation on the penultimate weekend of the season, but they stayed up, and finally got rid of Pardew in the process, so it’s hard to be overly negative.
The manager
Pardew picked up where he left off at the end of 2015-16 this term, as Palace struggled to both defend and attack. They got off to an ok start, but a six-match losing streak across October and November proved to be Pardew’s undoing. He was given another month, but four points from four matches weren’t enough for him to keep the job, especially with someone with Allardyce’s track record available.
Allardyce did what Allardyce always does: enough. Palace were in bad shape when he took over, and while results didn’t pick up immediately, a strong January transfer window helped turn things around. The Eagles spent around $30 million on Jeffrey Schlupp, Patrick van Aanholt and Milivojevic, while Liverpool’s Mamadou Sakho came in on loan.
Sakho was probably the most important contributor. The defender, who had spent the first half of the season in the Liverpool reserves, was crucial in shoring up a porous defense, which is always Allardyce’s primary focus when taking over a team in the relegation scrap.
This wasn’t Big Sam’s most impressive piece of work, but he was brought in for one reason, and he got the job done. Better late than never.
The players
Crystal Palace’s big summer signing, Christian Benteke, was decent, if not spectacular, in his first season at Selhurst Park. The Belgian struggled to adapt to Jurgen Klopp’s high intensity pressing game, but seemed to be a perfect fit in a Palace side with two pacey wide players in Wilfried Zaha and Christian Benteke.
Benteke managed 15 goals in the end, good for 10th in the league and his most since arriving in the Premier League in the 2012-13 season. However, he was inconsistent throughout, scoring eight goals in his first 13 league matches before managing one over the next 13. In the final nine games of the season, Benteke scored six times, including twice in Palace’s 2-1 win over Liverpool.
Zaha was Palace’s most impressive performer. The winger is finally developing into the player Sir Alex Ferguson thought he was buying in 2013. He scored seven goals and nine assists in total, and was consistently Palace’s most dangerous attacking threat. He still has more to prove as he continues to put that ill-fated spell in Manchester behind him, but at age 24, there’s plenty of time. The league’s top clubs could come calling again soon.