5th Jun 2024 • Written by Bruno Collingridge

Promise, Setbacks, and Injury Hell: The Story of Nathan Ferguson

Since signing for Palace in July 2020, Nathan Ferguson has played as many first-team minutes as he’s had serious injuries - 8 - and his market value is a fraction of what it was when he joined the Eagles.

In that same period of time, Crystal Palace have gone through four managers (Roy Hodgson, Patrick Vieira, Hodgson again, and Oliver Glasner), two Heads of Sports Medicine, and signed more players in Ferguson’s position than he’s played games for the club.

It’s been a devastatingly disappointing four and a half years for Ferguson, who was once described as “the best defender we have ever produced” by an experienced staff member at West Bromwich Albion.

Palace announced on Wednesday morning that Ferguson will leave the club this summer, with only one senior appearance under his belt during his spell in South London. In fact, the now-23-year-old has started just one professional game for any club since 2019.

How did it all go so wrong?

Why Palace signed Ferguson

When Crystal Palace lost Aaron Wan-Bissaka to Manchester United in 2019, finding a long-term replacement for the club’s 18/19 player of the season became a priority. Atlanta’s Timothy Castagne, Tottenham Hotspur’s Kyle Walker-Peters, and Arsenal’s Carl Jenkinson were all looked at by the South London club - but no serious attempts at permanently signing any of the aforementioned players were made. 

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Despite receiving a £45m fee from United (with £5m in potential add-ons) for Wan-Bissaka, Crystal Palace spent just over £6.5m in the summer window, preferring to wait for better options instead of rushing into an expensive mistake. With ~£120m plans to redevelop both Selhurst Park’s Main Stand and the Crystal Palace academy, only the perfect player could have forced their hand.

Therefore, Nathan Ferguson’s emergence at promotion-challenging West Bromwich Albion could not have been better timed for Crystal Palace’s needs.

At only 19 years of age, Ferguson was already one of the Championship’s most impressive full-backs - a feat made even more respectable by Ferguson’s status as a natural centre-back. He had only ever been played as a central defender before Slaven Bilić identified him as a potential full-back due to his physical and technical attributes. 

Within 6 months of his first-team debut, his manager had compared him to Declan Rice (who he’d managed at West Ham), and an experienced staff member at West Brom had described him as “the best defender they had ever produced”. More importantly for Crystal Palace, Ferguson’s contract was set to expire at the end of the season - meaning a permanent move could come at a discounted price.

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Ferguson was aware of the interest he had garnered. A five-year new contract offer from West Brom was effectively ignored, with Marseille, Atlético Madrid, AC Milan and Juventus all tracking his development alongside Crystal Palace. The relationship between Ferguson and West Brom began to sour, which culminated in Ferguson being removed from matchday squads once the January transfer window opened. 

Despite the elite stature of the clubs rivalling Palace, the promise of guaranteed game time made South London Ferguson’s preferred destination. However, Parish and co needed to act swiftly and effectively - failure to secure Ferguson’s services in January 2020 would allow foreign clubs to offer Ferguson a pre-contract agreement due to overseas transfer rules. 

Weeks of transfer negotiations with West Brom in January resulted in an agreed fee worth up to £11m for Ferguson, and his personal demands were easy enough to meet. Hodgson, Palace’s manager at the time, was under the impression that they had found their Wan-Bissaka replacement, and spoke of Ferguson’s talent in a pre-match press conference the day the deal was supposed to be announced.

It just wasn’t to be that simple.

During his medical, a routine scan on his knee revealed a severe issue, previously unbeknown to Ferguson or West Brom. Additional diagnostic conversations with knee experts in the United States were worrying enough to cause Palace to pull out of paying the £11m fee initially agreed, with Ferguson left in limbo.

Credit: Adam Fradgley/AMA/Getty Images

According to The Athletic, West Brom disagreed with Palace’s stance that Ferguson’s injury was severe enough to require surgery and keep him out at least until the end of the season - when Ferguson would be out of contract - and instead believed that it wouldn’t take any longer than 6-8 weeks for Ferguson to be back to full fitness.

The disparity between their views on Ferguson’s health was enough to break down any further price negotiations, meaning he could join Palace in the summer, with a final fee to be decided by a tribunal process.

Palace were somewhat satisfied with that conclusion. It would allow Ferguson significant time to recover from his knee injury, with the plan to slowly phrase him back into playing by rotating him with Joel Ward. Hodgson couldn’t wait to work with him, with Palace having not bought a starting defender during his tenure so far.

Ferguson joined Crystal Palace on July 21st, 2020 for an eventual fee of £900,000.

Setbacks and Injury Hell

Ferguson’s initial knee injury was severe enough to keep him out until late 2020, when he returned to first-team training in November. Palace staff were careful to ensure that the time he spent with the rest of the group was “controlled”, to reduce the chance of a relapse of the knee injury after so much time out.

Despite these precautions, Ferguson picked up a strain in his thigh muscle in December, which would keep him out for over three months. However, Hodgson was publicly optimistic, stating that such injuries weren’t abnormal in long-term absentees beginning to play at higher intensity, and that his knee wasn’t affected in any way. 

The Palace manager also pointed to Ferguson’s young age and “enthusiasm” as a potential cause of the thigh strain, perhaps implying that Ferguson’s determination to impress could have resulted in overexertion.

Fast forward to spring 2021, and excitement was brewing around Ferguson yet again. It had been over 15 months since Palace fans first heard his name in relation to their club, and his return to training appeared to signal the end of his long injury saga.

Image via cpfc.co.uk

He impressed Hodgson significantly in training, and was due to be rewarded with a start in Palace’s final game of the season against Liverpool. However, just days after Eberechi Eze suffered a torn achilles on the training pitch - one of the worst injuries a footballer can experience due to its impact on movement and speed - Ferguson tore his own achilles, ending any chance of him playing before winter.

Ferguson returned to first-team training in November, after a gruelling six-month recovery programme. Palace still had significant belief in his future at this point, especially due to how his pace and physical strength had been seemingly unaffected by serious injuries that typically do impact those attributes.

Like Hodgson, Patrick Vieira was also impressed by what he saw on the training pitch, and praised Ferguson’s pace, comfort on the ball, and proficiency at defending in 1v1 situations.

523 days after signing for Crystal Palace, Ferguson made his first-team debut on boxing day, playing 8 minutes as a substitute in a 3-0 defeat against Tottenham Hotspur.

It was an unremarkable cameo from the youngster, but a cause for optimism on an otherwise grim day out for Palace fans.

“I’m very happy though to finally say I’m a Palace player. Coming on makes me feel like I’m a proper Palace player.”

- Nathan Ferguson after his debut

Little did anyone know, it would be his first and only senior appearance for the club.

He was named on the bench three more times after the Spurs game, and made two appearances for Palace’s U21 side in January, but picked up a serious hamstring injury in February that kept him out for the rest of the season. 

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Ferguson featured in Palace’s pre-season games ahead of the 2022/2023 season, starting against QPR and being brought on at Selhurst Park against Montpellier - his only time playing in front of a relatively filled home crowd. He was fit, playing well, and seemed poised to finally challenge Joel Ward’s starting place. 

A freak injury to his foot, completely unrelated to any prior injuries, stopped Ferguson’s momentum right in its tracks, just days before he was due to be named in a Premier League squad for the first time since January.

Ferguson again played U21 football in early 2023, and was starting to train with the first team, but sustained a muscle tear in his leg that ended his season before it could begin. 

Speaking at that time, Hodgson, who had been brought in to replace Patrick Vieira, said: 

“We were very excited about him coming to the club — we thought we had a little diamond on our hands. What has happened to him over these three years has been a real tragedy.”

- Roy Hodgson

Ferguson didn’t play in any of Palace’s pre-season games last year, instead dedicating the summer to his recovery. It seemed to pay off, too - he featured consistently for the U21s in September and October, and played his first 90 minutes  in any competition for nearly four years later that month.

However, late in the same game, he picked up a serious hamstring complication that would keep him out until March of this year. 

Ferguson then played just 73 minutes across two U21 games before picking up a new injury that concluded both his season and his time at Crystal Palace.

Potential Reasons for Ferguson’s Injuries

The Palace Way spoke to a sports scientist with the aim to suggest reasons behind Ferguson’s injury woes.

Ferguson’s injury record in the West Brom academy was unremarkable, with very few interruptions to his development over the years. The beginnings of his professional career were similar - Ferguson was seemingly healthy, and played in every game he was eligible for in the first half of the 2019/2020 season.

One possible explanation for the initial knee problem Ferguson suffered could be the sudden jump from central defence to full-back partnered with the jump from U21 to professional football at the same time.

Image via cpfc.co.uk

Playing as a full-back is much more physically demanding due to the need to input both offensively and defensively, as well as the sudden changes in speed that occur in 1v1 situations. It is for this same reason that wingers are more prone to hamstring injuries than other footballers.

Additionally, Ferguson played 1,800 minutes of higher intensity Championship football in three months, with very few opportunities for rest, which have further exacerbated the problem in Ferguson's knee.

Furthermore, Ferguson's pace and strength, which have been lauded by his coaches, could actually have contributing to his knee injury.

Players with these attributes that play with rapid changes of speed and direction experience intense stress on their knees. For example, Lucas Hernandez - a full-back and centre-back with similar attributes to Ferguson - has suffered two severe ACL tears in the last two years.

Crystal Palace's medical staff seem to have included these ideas in their recovery plans for Ferguson, in that he has predominantly featured as a centre-back, rather than a full-back, in the games he played for Palace's U21 side.

Image via Football London

However, the reliability of Ferguson's muscles appears to have suffered due to the time he spent out due to the initial knee injury and freak achilles injury, which adds up to 23 months. Any player that spends that amount of time out of the game will be more prone to muscular problems, which could explain why Ferguson has been the victim of five individual injuries to his leg muscles.

What's next for Ferguson?

Despite his injury problems, Ferguson has never stopped working on his rehabilitation, and is hugely popular in South London. His contributions towards the Palace For Life Foundation charity earned him the PFA Community Champion award in 2022.

Roy Hodgson couldn't have described Ferguson's time at Crystal Palace any better - it's been a tragedy for both the player and the club. Any player with an injury record like his will have to think very carefully about their next steps, and where they want to take their future.

One hopes that Ferguson can move down a level in terms of intensity and shake off the hamstring problems that have plagued his time at Crystal Palace, and potentially carve a successful career for himself after a torrid five years that started with such promise.

He deserves that chance.

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