12th Dec 2023 • Written by Riley Moquin

Roy Hodgson is underperforming at Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace have gone over a month without a win. In that time, the Eagles have lost to Everton, Luton Town, Bournemouth, and Liverpool, and the performances have mostly been dire. Many Palace fans would consider three of those winnable, yet all four ended with zero points, and the club now sits 15th in the Premier League.

Chairman Steve Parish infamously spoke of taking Palace to “the next level,” but the club has shown little drive to meet that target. For Palace, consistent Premier League survival is the essential piece of the puzzle. Financial growth depends on it in every aspect, from the TV rights to the subsequent funding of the long-promoted Main Stand redevelopment. Relegation would mean that Palace’s “next level” ambitions are dead in the water.

The focus on sustained Premier League survival means Parish and the rest of the Palace board are – for the time being – seemingly content with a mid-table finish. Last season, Patrick Vieira was sacked as manager at Selhurst Park after going two and a half months without a win, with the poor run of form leaving Palace just three points above the relegation zone. Roy Hodgson was appointed as Vieira’s immediate successor to save Palace from relegation, having had years of experience navigating the club to survival during his previous stint in charge.

Hodgson’s ten-match run in charge was a resounding success. Palace won five of those games, drew three, and lost only two. In the build-up to Vieira’s dismissal, Palace became the first Premier League side on record to go three consecutive matches without a shot on target, with the final straw for Vieira being a 1-0 loss to Brighton with just three shots on target and no goals.

Hodgson immediately yielded results. With a 2-1 win over Leicester, a 5-1 win over Leeds, and a 2-0 victory over Southampton, Hodgson had seemingly flipped Palace into an exciting, attacking team. While the competition was much easier, Hodgson was doing what is needed and expected of a Palace manager: winning the games against the teams below.

Hodgston’s return to Palace was repeatedly described as a 'see out the season’ hire. Yet his success in the final ten games was enough—perhaps aided by a shortage of standout successors on the market—to earn him the 2023–24 season as well. As mentioned before, Premier League survival is the foremost objective at Palace, and Hodgson seemed to have proven he could ensure just that.

While his first tenure at Palace was defined by a lack of transfer funds, many fans still rolled their eyes at his initial reappointment in March due to his history of handing minutes to ageing veterans at the expense of the club’s young talent. Hodgson had built an identity as a manager who leans on the safety net of reliable veterans, yet his ten-match run in spring 2023 saw midfielder Eberechi Eze ascend to new heights and Premier League stardom alongside Michael Olise, who became one of the Premier League's best creative players, doing it all with Wilfried Zaha in-and-out of the lineup through injury.

In May, with two matches left in the season and his future with Palace still undetermined, Hodgson told Gary Neville that Palace was “100 percent” a top-half side in 2023–24, granting the club addressed "one or two positions.” The Palace Way sources understand that the two positions the club were looking to fill were a winger and a striker. Perhaps the top-half objective was his motivation for agreeing to stay on for another year, as it would become an oft-repeated goal over the summer from both Hodgson and others at the club, including Eze during Palace’s pre-season tour in the United States.

Surely the top-half objective came with the caveat of signings to fill the gaps Hodgson spoke of in May, as he reiterated on several occasions during the summer and in the early season the need for and expectation of more signings. Even after the signings of Matheus França, Jefferson Lerma, Dean Henderson, and Rob Holding, Hodgson seemed to have an expectation of one or two first-team quality acquisitions. After the transfer window closed, Hodgson stated Palace had two signings fall through that the club “were counting on.”

Publicly, Hodgson was sympathetic to chairman Steve Parish and sporting director Dougie Freedman over the failed signings. Yet the manager’s attitude since then has become increasingly concerning and even bizarre. Following Palace’s 2-1 loss to Tottenham in October, Hodgson criticised the young trio of França, Jesurun Rak-Sakyi, and Naouirou Ahamada: “They didn’t do anything for us at all, really. We became much weaker when I made the substitutions.” Rak-Sakyi was subbed on in the 60th minute, Ahamada in the 70th, and França in the 79th. Hodgson later apologised for the comments, yet the Tottenham match remains among the only extended minutes any of the three young talents have received this season.

Apologies for concerning comments have become a normality for Hodgson since the Spurs match. There was the bizarre comment he made regarding Eze’s current injury, when he stated Eze and the club medical staff were at odds over how long he would be out but then backpedalled and bitterly stated, “The problem is I treated a press conference as if I was talking to people who would understand a little bit of humour.” He apologised for causing confusion. Of course, perhaps the worst of these concerning statements was following last Wednesday’s 2-0 loss to Bournemouth, where he stated that Palace fans had been “spoiled here in recent times.” Once again, he later apologised.

Palace are suffering on and off-the-pitch as a result of Hodgson’s attitude. Perhaps he is bitter because he was promised signings that did not come. Perhaps he is also bitter because the lack of signings has made Palace’s ongoing injury crisis exponentially worse. There is no doubt the manager has been dealt an awful hand, yet his frustrations are increasingly at the expense of Palace’s future. Eze has been in-and-out of Palace’s gameday squad, yet França has hardly seen the pitch. Zaha is gone, Jeffrey Schlupp has looked far from Premier League-quality, and Olise was injured for months, yet Rak-Sakyi had hardly seen the pitch prior to his injury. The same is true—even more so—for Ahamada.

Hodgson has taken out his frustrations on Palace’s youth, the club’s fans, and the worst part? He is not doing what he was hired to do. Roy Hodgson is not winning the winnable matches.

Injury woes or not, the available Palace side last week was talented enough to defeat Bournemouth. The available squad should have beaten—or at least found a way to gain points against—Luton. The same goes for Everton. As Hodgson continues to lose matches against bottom-half sides, his leadership becomes harder and harder to defend. Hodgson is the manager of Crystal Palace because he is supposed to provide stability, sitting in mid-table and beating the clubs below while fighting respectably with the clubs above. Yet Palace are sitting in 15th, just seven points above the dropzone, with a run of fixtures against Manchester City, Brighton, Chelsea, Brentford, and Arsenal upcoming. With Palace falling down the table, Hodgson is running out of clubs below him to beat. As that happens, it becomes harder and harder to see why Roy Hodgson is still in charge at Crystal Palace.

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