The latest round of capital raising between Crystal Palace’s shareholders for the club’s new Selhurst Park main stand reached its final stages this week; This will be the first major work to be carried out on the stadium since the 1990s – although it may not represent enough change for many. .
There was more discontent at Goodison Park on Wednesday night; The FA Cup defeat, Roy Hodgson’s substitutions and the general dismay of some of the club’s support who declared themselves unhappy with the status quo. What is this status quo? Strictly speaking, this is the most successful period in the history of one of Britain’s oldest clubs. Palace are enjoying their 11th consecutive Premier League season; This season is the longest uninterrupted period in England’s top-flight league football in more than 100 years.
Palace also came close to a first major trophy, including an FA Cup final in 2016 and a semi-final six years later, but football clubs are never simple. The mood of fans ebbs and flows according to many factors that cannot always be offset by predictions of a better future.
Hodgson kept Palace in the Premier League for five seasons, including his return last March to succeed Patrick Vieira. If this season is to be the end of his 48-year managerial career, Hodgson’s performance is remarkable. It outperformed all comparable European peers. For example, he could face Arsene Wenger during Palace’s visit to the United Arab Emirates on Saturday. The Frenchman is almost two years younger than Hodgson. Hodgson may not have as many trophies as Wenger or his ilk, but none of them have been in demand for as long.
Hodgson has seen enough in football to know that no matter how sound long-term strategies are, there are many who don’t want to hear about it when results go south. In a game driven by emotions, the mood can change quickly. Palace’s plan to convert the Premier League and investor money into infrastructure (stadium, training ground, academy) is the only viable long-term strategy. Still, the clamor for someone, anyone, to make a transformative signing can be overwhelming.
There is a need to build momentum in the last few days of the window. Chairman Steve Parish and director of football Dougie Freedman are active in the market and Kalvin Phillips could be a new addition to a midfield department badly affected by injuries. Like many others, Palace are eyeing a striker and right-back. But this is a club that has been slowly making progress in the Premier League since their unexpected rise in 2013. This plan will not change.
Palace are in the bottom eight of the league in terms of revenue generation. The Parish-led consortium has invested around £80 million over the 13 years since the club left administration. It cannot be compared to the recent huge investments of team owners such as Manchester City, Newcastle United, Chelsea, Everton and even Tottenham. But such fossil fuel billionaires, private equity and nation-state investors are not lining up to buy the Palace.
The club currently generates around £130 million from central television rights payments and around £40 million from commercial and matchday revenues, depending on the league’s finish. He’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the league’s great hitters. The £160 million investment in the new main stand, the first serious modernization of Selhurst Park since the rebuilding of the Holmesdale Stand in the 1990s, could eventually add another £20 million in annual income.
All this takes time. Meanwhile, competition is heating up. Aston Villa has wealthy owners who are expanding Villa Park. West Ham have an effectively constructed and government-funded stadium. Tony Bloom has invested more than £400 million in Brighton. All of these clubs were once Palace’s lower mid-table rivals and all have spent time in the Championship over the last 15 years. However, in 2024, the standard of this group will rise even higher.
Hodgson led Palace through a crucial period in the rebuilding of the training ground and academy, which cost £50 million, including land acquisition. The club is aware that it needs to do more to develop and sell academy players and is making some of the investment with this in mind. The final phase, a major injury rehabilitation centre, opens in May and with it comes the rebuilding of a training ground that has never really been a training ground in the past. For a very long time it was just temporary cabins and their accompanying fields.
The challenge for Hodgson this season has been to deal with some of the constraints that investment in other parts of the club can place on spending. The injuries of Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze seriously affected the team this season. Cheick Doucoure ruptured his Achilles tendon in November and will not play again until 2024-25. These three and Marc Guehi represent the club’s best assets and Hodgson’s successor may have to deal with the sale of one or more of them in the summer.
But this is the reality of life at a club where two previous ownerships have suffered from administration, including the separation of stadium and club. The current regime is determined to do it differently. But with just five league wins all season, frustration can boil over, as it did at Goodison on Wednesday. Hodgson was trying to resolve Eze’s ankle tendon problem and replaced him with a view to a lunchtime kick-off at Arsenal on Saturday. Traveling fans reacted harshly to this situation.
There are many reasons why Palace’s squad is weak. When all the extras and bonuses are added the wage bill comes to around £100 million; This means Palace will need to increase their income to comply, presumably under new financial fair play regulations known as team costs. The club takes its profit and sustainability rules (PSR) as seriously as one would expect, and in the current enforcement environment this is no small matter.
The club tried to chart a different path from time to time. Signing high-salaried established players like Yohan Cabaye and Christian Benteke without resale value has had a distorting effect on the wage bill and is unlikely to happen again. The success of the transfers of Olise, Eze, Guehi, Doucoure and Joachim Andersen raised the bar. The recruiting department has been recalibrated to recognize that not every player can be expected to tick every box, including good resale value.
Hodgson has made some clear remarks in recent months about fans’ expectations being realistic. He would later apologize for declaring that his fans were “spoiled”. But the point made is correct. Are fans prepared to tolerate the process of establishing a club in the modern era? Especially when this structure is from a very low base, in the midst of extraordinary competition and under the aegis of the PSR. The latest PSR charges for Everton and Nottingham Forest offer a new dimension.
Palace’s situation could be better, and it’s not hard to grapple with their survival in the lower midtables or the relative success of their rivals. But it could be much worse, and this approach has a clear strategy: to increase Palace’s financial capacity to lure them away from the league’s lowest-earning players and look beyond the annual battle for survival in the Premier League.
“They’ve seen the trials and tribulations and I’m sure they dream that one day there will be no more trials and tribulations,” Hodgson said of fans on Friday. “But they are used to helping the team get through these periods.”
There are no billionaires waiting to buy Palace and spend on the stadium at PSR limits and beyond. We know this because if that were the case, the existing property would be sold. The club is approximately 55 percent owned by Parish, American investors Josh Harris and David Blitzer, and various smaller shareholders. Eagle Football, led by US investor John Textor, has a 45 per cent share. All shareholders will contribute to the new stand and Parish will personally guarantee around £5 million. Harris, a US sports franchise owner, is a billionaire but is not ready to invest a fortune in Palace.
Meanwhile, it is Parish and Hodgson who find themselves at the forefront of taking the criticism. Being prepared to be unpopular, at least for a while, is a requirement in football that not everyone can experience. However, neither man built their respective careers by constantly worrying about what people thought.
The alternative, of course, is to promise what you don’t have and spend what you can’t afford, but this has consequences. Palace have sailed close to the wind in the Premier League and have turned survival into an art form over 11 years. The long-term reward – building infrastructure to increase revenue and ultimately increase squad depth – is the only logical path to sustainability. Although the journey there can be crazy, it is a good destination.