The Table Doesn’t Lie: The Frank de Boer ultimatum gets dumber
Crystal Palace fired Frank de Boer after only 77 matches in charge, Renato Sanches endured a difficult Swansea debut and more.
20. West Ham (preseason prediction: 10th, difference: -10)
19. Crystal Palace (11th, -8)
18. Bournemouth (8th, -10)
17. Leicester (15th, -2)
16. Everton (7th, -9)
The word ahead of Crystal Palace’s trip to Burnley on Sunday was that anything but an Eagles win would see Frank de Boer fired, the stupidity of which approach to manager (de)appointment was made almost immediately apparent by the facts of the match itself, as the home side took the lead within three minutes courtesy of an extremely terrible Lee Chung-yong back-pass that went straight to Chris Wood for the game’s only goal.
The word after Palace’s loss to Burnley on Sunday was that the club would make a decision on de Boer’s future in the next 48 hours, 24 hours into which de Boer was given the sack, to be replaced by Roy Hodgson. What, it seems reasonable to ask, changed? What could Eagles chairman Steve Parish have possibly learned about de Boer on Sunday he didn’t already know?
Palace were better than Burnley. They conceded only one good chance, the result of a freak individual error, they dominated possession and were more ambitious than their opponents in attack. The Clarets shouldn’t be criticized for retreating into their defensive shell after being gifted the lead, but despite excellent performances from center-backs James Tarkowski and Ben Mee, they were made to look fragile, especially in the last 15 minutes. Christian Benteke (somewhat in character, admittedly) missed a one-on-one, Scott Dann missed a header from two yards out, and had two more shots cleared off the line, Jeff Schlupp missed the target unmarked from inside the box.
There is no way around it: Palace were better. But they lost, and they remain pointless and goalless after four matches, spared the indignity of last place for now only by the various woes of Slaven Bilic’s West Ham.
The questions facing de Boer during and after his first three games — home defeats to Huddersfield and Swansea, and an away loss to Liverpool — were reasonable enough: why did he insist on playing a back-three, despite a lack of quality center-backs and wing-backs and box-to-box midfielders? Was it possible he was trying to change too much too soon, that the players at his disposal either weren’t capable of playing or needed more time to get to grips with his preferred style of pass-first soccer?
Those are fair questions, the sorts of questions every manager must face. But if the people asking them thought answers could be definitively provided by a single match in September, the people asking them were doing so in bad faith, in the hope Sunday’s match would simply reinforce the beliefs they had already determined to hold.
It did not. Nothing about Palace’s performance against Burnley suggested that de Boer is aloof to criticism, too stubborn to adjust his style to the strengths and weaknesses of his players, that the players want him gone or even that he’s doing a particularly bad job.
Lest we forget, the people who fired de Boer are the same ones who refused to fire Alan Pardew for almost a year after it became obvious he had nothing more to offer the team. They stuck with him through January and February and March of 2016, when Palace picked up only two points from a possible 33. They stuck with him through April and May, when a trip to the FA Cup final helped gloss over a run of two league wins from eight, nine points from 24. They even stuck with him in October and November, when a six-game losing streak made it clear Pardew’s problem had not simply been the lack of the reliable goalscorer the club paid £30 million for over the summer.
And yet here is de Boer, out of a job after 77 days, eight fewer than he managed at Inter Milan last season, and five competitive matches.
Results are not the only relevant consideration here, but if the problem wasn’t soccer-related — if de Boer was a bad fit personality-wise, impossible to work with at an administrative level, a raging asshole, whatever — then why did they wait at all, what did results have to do with anything? Almost without exception, when a manager is fired after as short a time as de Boer was, it says more about the club than the manager.
The whole stupid mess is only made more frustrating by the big-picture position Palace find themselves in. The Eagles are in their fifth consecutive season in the top flight, and on their sixth full-time manager. They have already cycled through the league’s premier stability candidates, Tony Pulis and Sam Allardyce, and have now turned to another, less reliable one.
So it’s worth emphasizing that hiring de Boer, someone to establish a club-wide playing philosophy, someone who aspires to a style that will keep fans happy even if the team never rises above the mid-table, made a lot of sense. It made so much sense, in fact, it doesn’t make any less sense 77 days later.
The mid-table-relegation-battle grind is a philosophical problem as much as a sporting one. There comes a point where a team must decide whether mere survival is enough, or whether they want to aspire to something more. That “something more” often entails a shift to a more expansive playing style only complicates matters, because it is a very difficult thing to do, to go from being one kind of team to another, without getting any worse in between.
A successful transition demands, among other things, bravery, a willingness to trust your manager and players to eventually get things right, even if they are presently getting things wrong. What Palace were trying to do with de Boer was a hard thing to do, and it’s possible, given the nature of Allardyce’s departure, not to mention the identity of de Boer’s replacement, they never really wanted to do it in the first place. That doesn’t change the fact they failed.
15. Swansea (17th, +2)
14. Brighton (20th, +6)
13. Southampton (9th, -4)
12. Stoke (16th, +4)
11. Arsenal (6th, -5)
A brief word on Renato Sanches, whose loan to Swansea was perhaps the most eye-catching move of deadline day. His debut, against Newcastle on Sunday, was also eye-catching, primarily because he was awful. Sanches turned 20 last month, and showed enough during his time at Benfica and with the Portuguese national team to convince Bayern Munich to shell out potentially as much as $96 million for him, which is a lot of money for the German club, relatively frugal by today’s not-relatively not-frugal standards. That’s a big endorsement in itself, but sooner or later Sanches is going to have to actually play well — pass to his teammates and not get tackled and so on. The Swans lacked any creative threat against Newcastle, and they’re not exactly drowning in playmakers, so Sanches should get plenty of opportunities to put things right. But it was an ugly, ugly start.
Next: Ranking every Premier League season
10. Newcastle (14th, +4)
9. West Brom (12th, +3)
8. Liverpool (3rd, -5)
7. Burnley (19th, +12)
6. Huddersfield (18th, +12)
5. Tottenham (4th, -1)
4. Watford (13th, +9)
3. Chelsea (5th, +2)
2. Manchester City (1st, -1)
1. Manchester United (2nd, +1)
The big controversy of the weekend centered on Sadio Mane’s red card against Manchester City, and whether or not intent is a relevant consideration when one player has kicked another in the face. The rules say quite clearly it’s not, and yet the debate has rumbled on all the same. Even Pep Guardiola thought it was harsh. All of which raises the remarkable question of how many people involved in the sport actually know the rules.
Whatever the answer, the decision ended the match — not great to begin with, but at least competitive — as a contest. City scored four goals after going a man up, and we will now find out whether Liverpool can play without Mane.
The addition of Mohamed Salah in the summer was designed, in part, to ensure the Reds would have a threat in behind in the absence of their Senegalese winger, while Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain might now be given an opportunity to move on from his current status as the poster boy of intra-top-six thrashings as Mane’s replacement.
There is also the small matter of Philippe Coutinho’s reintegration into the squad following his phantom back injury. Liverpool have five more games this month, so it’s likely we’ll see the Brazilian back in the lineup soon, and now quite possibly in the wide forward role he occupied last season, rather than the midfield berth Jurgen Klopp seems to want him to play long-term.
As for City, this was an excellent win, man advantage or not. There were moments before the red card when the defense showed familiar weaknesses, with Nicolas Otamendi in particular getting exposed by Salah, but that feels a little beside the point after a 5-0 win against a top six rival.
The Segio Aguero-Jesus Navas partnership showed real promise, Kevin De Bruyne continued to dominate and, perhaps most significantly, Guardiola once again showed off his overlooked versatility, playing with a flat back five for long stretches, and targeting the Reds on the counter-attack. The result was skewed by the sending off, but it’s worth remembering City led 1-0 before it happened. The title favorites are getting better.