It was "embarrassing" as soon as he won the FA Cup. The meritorious coach of Crystal Palace turned to Leipzig, and Southgate took over?

In the long years of the team building, in the empty honor room of Crystal Palace, there are only two second-tier league champion trophys and one third-tier league champion trophy. Eze's goal and Henderson's divine save gave them the first real All-English championship, but after the big joy, they may lose their core for the second consecutive year. This is the survival dilemma of second-rate teams in the league surrounded by giants - if they play poorly, they may be relegated; if they play well, they will attract giant teams to poach them crazy and then be relegated in the second year.

After the FA Cup, Crystal Palace has two games left in the Premier League in 2024-25 season. As long as they win another draw, they can break the team's highest score in the Premier League. Faced with such a good result, many people may have forgotten that they did not win the first league game until the 9th round at the beginning of the season, and the 8-round defeat once made them a favorite to relegate.

The reason for this kind of collapse was that after the end of last season, Crystal Palace had suffered a serious talent loss, and Olisse, the most important player in the team, was brought to the Allianz Stadium by Bayern for 53 million euros. Crystal Palace's tactics are to fly together around Olisse and Eze. After Olisse left, the "Hawks" with one wings fell into weakness immediately. Fortunately, they also have head coach Oliver Glasner. Under Glasner's adjustment, since the 9th round of the Premier League defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on October 27 last year, Crystal Palace ranked sixth in the Premier League record, second only to Liverpool, Newcastle, Arsenal, Chelsea and Nottingham Forest.

Austrian Glasner, who is 51 years old in three months, became the head coach of Crystal Palace on February 20 last year. He then led the team to score 7 wins, 3 draws and 3 losses in the remaining 13 Premier League games last season and scored 24 points. Crystal Palace only scored 25 points in the previous 25 rounds. The 49-point score of the entire season is also the highest score for Crystal Palace to participate in the Premier League. What they are most likely to break this season is the record set just last season.

Grasner has been chased by Red Bull Leipzig and Tottenham Hotspur, with Red Bull Leipzig increasingly close ties with him.

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Since taking over Roy Hodgson's burden in February 2024, Glasner has made the South London team a force that cannot be underestimated, setting the record for the highest score per game by Crystal Palace coach in the Premier League (1.49 points). After the arrival of

Glasner, his vitality and enthusiasm had a great impact on Selhurst Park Stadium and brought great encouragement to the players.

Crystal Palace won six wins and one draw in the last seven rounds of the Premier League last season, but because Olise joined Bayern Munich and as many as seven players represented their respective countries to reach the final of the international event last summer (four of them represented England to reach the final of the European Cup, and two represented France to reach the final of the Paris Olympics), Crystal Palace's summer preparations were seriously affected. In terms of signings, they delayed until the transfer deadline at the end of August and announced the joining of four new players.

This means that the core members of the team did not conduct pre-season training, and Glasner requires the players to have the highest level of physical fitness to implement the high-intensity compression tactics he likes.

Fortunately, after experiencing the chaos at the beginning of the season, Glasner still stabilized Crystal Palace. The team's strength has not declined but increased, and its mental outlook has been completely renewed.

"I'm very happy," Glasner said, "not just because of the team's progress, but also because of the good atmosphere we create in the training ground and in the club."

"We are ambitious and everyone is trying to improve, which is the main reason why we've achieved our current results at the end of the season.

"We are in the middle position at the moment, and we're more focused on the team ahead than the team behind. ”

"We also won the FA Cup and we are very satisfied with our performance in the past 15-16 months. ”

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Crystal Palace has never won the FA Cup - they lost to Manchester United twice in the finals in 1990 and 2016.

However, Glasner has experience in winning the championship, leading Frankfurt to win the UEFA Cup in 2022, and he also won the Austrian Cup with Reed twice during his player age, spending most of his player career with Reed. John Texter, one of the co-owners of Crystal Palace, originally wanted Glasner to coach Lyon, another club owned by Texter, If Glasner could speak French, he would probably be the head coach of Lyon now.

However, in an interview with BBC Sports last year, Texter said the Austrian was "more suitable" for Crystal Palace, impressed Crystal Palace club chairman Steve Parrish and then sporting director Dougie Friedman.

"He is that modern coach, controlling everything about players, including physically," Texter said. "He would get the players' training intensity to 120% on Wednesday and then arrange for them to recover, so they feel relaxed and at 90 minutes on Saturday. ”

" As far as his game style is concerned, I think he and Crystal Palace are perfect matches. Glasner's theory is that he would rather grab the ball in the opponent's half... so that he can know where the opponent's weakness lies. ”

At some press conferences, Glasner confidently analyzed the opponent's tactics to the media—even when his team faced Manchester City and Guardiola in December last year.

"We know we can play higher strength than Manchester City—all the data proved that," said Glasner after Crystal Palace drew 2-2 with Manchester City. "There is a lot of room next to Gundogan. When you use a No. 6 player and 4-1-4-1 formation like Manchester City, there is a lot of room on both sides of the No. 6 player. ”

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Glasner was very active and kept telling his players to treat every game with a winning attitude.

In August 2011, Glasner, who was still a player, suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while preparing for the UEFA Cup for Reed and retired. At that time, he was 37 years old.

Glasner suffered a head injury in a previous game. Before the UEFA Cup, he tried to head the ball in training. He felt uncomfortable after returning to the hotel room and needed to be rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery.

When asked whether the cerebral hemorrhage was the reason why he remained optimistic, Glasner downplayed this.

"Of course, everything that happens in life will affect our mentality. I just tried to stay positive because life would be better. "He said.

"When you are always complaining about something, you get stuck in a negative cycle and can't enjoy a lot of things. That's why I want to see the positive side of it. ”

"This does not mean that I am always happy and can sing and dance anytime, anywhere, but that I always keep a positive side when judging and doing things. ”

Under Glasner's leadership, Crystal Palace's performance improved significantly, and the 3-4-2-1 formation allowed him to polish tactics around the team's offensive talent.

However, although the formation was a sign of his tenure at Crystal Palace, he admitted that his favorite thing was actually 4-4-2.

Eze is one of the players who have performed well in recent weeks, but like the entire team, he has also started low and high this season.

Glasner said Eze's start of the season was "strange", with minor injuries, canceled goals and missed opportunities that kept him from getting into the form.

But since scoring the first goal for England in March, Eze has improved, scoring six goals and two assists in the next nine club games.

"It seems that this goal is important, and it's his first goal for England, and I know what that means to him," Glasner added.

"It's what he deserves, and scoring for his country, which may help him restore 1%, 2%, 3% confidence. Since then, he has scored a lot of goals, a lot of important goals, the first goal, the opener goal, and the goal in the FA Cup final. ”

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Like last year, Crystal Palace, which has achieved the best record in history, has become a "supermarket" to be opened. The defender is also a member of the England team, Geye has been confirmed to leave the team, and core players such as Adam Walton, Matteta and Eze have also had "scandals" with other teams.

What makes the club more trouble than the players being "snatched" is that they may not even be able to save Glasner. The Bundesliga Red Bull is launching a "hard attack" against him. Compared with Crystal Palace, although Red Bull Leipzig has no European battle to fight next season, the strong financial resources of the Red Bull Group make them more capable when retaining core players. This has a huge attraction to Glasner, so he may be more inclined to be in the highlights. Leaving Crystal Palace instead of facing the pain of losing the best player again.

Crystal Palace, in order to deal with Glasner's possible departure, the club has listed Southgate as a potential successor. Southgate is not only the former coach of England, but also played for Crystal Palace in his time as a player. According to the "Football Insider" website, Southgate was found to have in-depth conversations with Crystal Palace club chairman Parish during the FA Cup final halftime break. The website also revealed that when Crystal Palace did not win the 8th round of the Premier League in October last year, the club considered replacing Southgate with Southgate. In addition, in addition to Southgate, Moyes and Graham Porter were also within the scope of consideration of Crystal Palace.