Crystal Palace manager Oliver Glasner has admitted their lack of points is clearly a problem, but there are mitigating factors for why they’ve struggled this season.
The Austrian has been speaking to Sky in his homeland about the current state of affairs at Crystal Palace after a difficult start to the season.
Crystal Palace sit 18th in the Premier League at this moment in time, without a win in their opening seven games and with just four points to their name.
They’ve lost five of those seven games and, crucially, dropped points against fellow strugglers such as Everton and Leicester City.
The poor start has wiped away any positivity from the end of last season in which Glasner’s arrival sparked a superb run that eventually saw them finish tenth in the table and 23 points away from the relegation battle they’d previously been involved in.
It’s followed a disappointing summer in which they sold Michael Olise to Bayern Munich and Joachim Andersen to Fulham and only replaced both players with late arrivals.
That, plus other factors, is what Glasner believes have caused their poor start to the season, with him adamant they are very important aspects which need to be considered.
“Of course we are not satisfied with the points. The points are clearly a problem. Of course it doesn’t help us,” he said.
“I think the performances were often better than the points. We are missing a few percentage points to turn the games to our advantage.
“And yes, I think we have one or two explanations for that. But yes, that often sounds like an excuse or an excuse. But the fact is, and we have to be honest with ourselves, that we just did a lot of transfers very, very late. Yes, only four on the deadline day. That certainly didn’t all go well.
“We got Ismaila Sarr very, very late. So that’s certainly what we could have done better. Then we have the fact that we just had a lot of players in the various finals. So, if I see the team now, then we have 12 players who we didn’t have longer than 10 days in preparation. And most of them even got even shorter or only after the preparation. That’s 60% of the team.
“With all that, we just didn’t start that way. We lost a bit of self-confidence. And we’re running after that now. So, I say very late transfers, no joint preparation and then we started with two defeats. It all cost us a certain amount of self-confidence.
“But what is very positive to me is that we are in every game. And we’re almost there. Now it’s up to us not to lose our heads, but to just keep working very hard, to get the boys all to the same level now, football-wise, tactical-wise, also in terms of the spirit, to win the win.”
