How Crystal Palace Explains This Newsletter

Some sad news, some happy news

Photo by Paul Harding/Getty Images

I’ve been thinking a lot about Crystal Palace -- because “thinking about Crystal Palace” is a thing a lot of you have paid me to do.

Even if you’ve paid me to do those things, you still might not know all that much about Crystal Palace. As far as I can tell, they’re the only Premier League team with cheerleaders, seemingly a vestige of a time back when English soccer owners were still entranced by the spectacle of NFL Sundays. Since then, the Premier League has become its own version of the NFL — a glittering weekly chaos-driver. Leagues want to be it, teams want to be with it. As of today, England’s top-flight is the only league in the world netting north of a billion pounds in annual domestic TV revenue. 

Although the collection of top divisions in England, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy is colloquially known as the “Big Five”, it’s really a big one, and a not-quite-as-big four. According to Deloitte’s latest annual accounting of club revenues, five of the 10 richest teams play in England -- seven of the top 20, 12 of the top 30. Crystal Palace made €161.3 million for the 2019-20 season, more than all but 24 other teams in the world, more than Ajax, who are currently ranked fifth by FiveThirtyEight’s global power-rating system, and AC Milan, who are currently tied atop the league in Italy. Milan and Ajax are two of the most iconic teams in the sport; they’ve each won multiple Champions League titles and just the sight of their uniforms -- the blocky red inside the white, the black-and-red stripes -- evokes memories of a certain time and place, a certain style of play. If you see a stranger in a Milan or an Ajax top, you already know a thing or two about them.

What do you think when you see someone wearing a Crystal Palace jersey? I don’t know; I live in Los Angeles; I’ve never seen it. The only Palace jerseys I’ve seen in person were at a youth tournament on Long Island that invited Wigan and Palace teams to participate. Two Wigan players stayed at our house; we watched one of the Mission: Impossible movies together; I hope they’re both well. And yet some 20 years later, here is Crystal Palace: this team with a silly name and those garish primary-color uniforms and its cheerleaders, raking in more cash than Ajax or Milan for no real reason other than “We’re English”. Palace have never won a top-flight trophy. They finished third in the Premier League once, runners-up in the FA Cup twice. They did win something called the Full Members' Cup, a short-lived competition with strange entry rules that was terminated a year after Palace lifted the trophy.

Coming into this season, it sure looked like their next shot at a trophy would come in the second division. Although they’d finished 14th last year, they ended up with the third-worst expected-goal differential. The year before, it was fourth-worst. They lost the manager, Roy Hodgson, who might’ve been helping them outperform those underlying numbers, and replaced him with Patrick Vieira, a legendary player with a mediocre-at-best track record as a manager. On top of that, Vieira was taking over the oldest team in the league. Weighted by minus played, their average age was 29.1, meaning the average Palace player was past the typically prime years of 24 through 28. This was already one of the worst teams in the league, and it seemed like they might get even worse as all their players got even older. To my eyes, that made them an easy target for relegation. I picked them to finish 19th.

Their fans, though, couldn’t see any of that. According to a pre-season survey conducted by The Athletic, 95 percent of Palace fans felt optimistic about the 2021-22 season -- second only to Chelsea supporters, whose team had just won the Champions League. This seemed like a clear example of the difference between emotion-based and analytical thinking, and it was. Except, the fans were the ones who had it right.

Through 11 games, Crystal Palace are in 10th place. Per FiveThirtyEight, they only have a five-percent chance of getting relegated, while they also have a four-percent chance of finishing in the top four. They have the eighth-best xG differential in the league -- despite already playing Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, and West Ham. They’ve easily been a top-10 team in the league, and given the schedule, they’re probably even better than that.

StatsBomb @StatsBomb

xG Difference, Premier League 2021-22

So, what the hell happened? They did get younger, but not by much. Vieira has dropped the average age down to 28, making them the fifth-oldest rather than first-oldest team. A bunch of 30-plus players -- Andros Townsend, Gary Cahill, Patrick Van Aanholt, Scott Dann, and James McCarthy -- all played at least 24 percent of the team’s minutes last season, and none of them have played a single minute this year. At the same time, Eberechi Eze, the exciting 23-year-old winger, hasn’t played this season after making 75 percent of the minutes last year. In the other direction, James McArthur, Tyrick Mitchell, and Joel Ward have all increased their minutes share by 34 percent or more this season, and all three have been on the field for almost every minute this year. A quartet of 25-and-under signings -- Conor Gallagher, Marc Guehi, Joachim Andersen, and Odsonne Edouard -- have all played at least 50 percent of the minutes for their new team, too.

The biggest explanation for Palace’s push up the table probably lies somewhere within that morass of movement. The players play the games, after all. Better ones make you better, and vice versa. But at the same time, that doesn’t feel satisfying. New signings usually take a while to settle in and have an effect on winning, and none of those players really feel like truly game-changing talents who could drive Palace up from “relegation quality” to “outside shot at the Champions League”. Gallagher and Andersen were both on relegated teams last year, Guehi was playing in the Championship, and Edouard, well, he’s a striker who’s only scored three goals so far. Could McArthur, Mitchell, or Ward be soccer’s version of Shane Battier, the no-stats All-Star who drives winning in barely perceptible ways? Perhaps, but I’m not quite buying it.

The other big change, of course, is the arrival of Vieira. And the team has certainly changed the way it’s playing under him. They’re pressing more frequently, they’re crossing the ball less often, and they’re taking fewer shots from outside the box -- three things that do seem to have at least a loose relationship with winning. Better teams tend to do all of those things, and Vieira’s Palace is doing all of those things better than Hodgson’s Palace. Except, if Vieira’s a big reason behind Palace’s improvement, then how to explain what’s happening at the club he left? In his final season at Nice, Vieira’s team finished with the 11th-best xG differential in France: minus-0.14 per 90 minutes. This year, they’re leading France by the same metric. Yes, even ahead of Messi, and Mbappe, and Neymar, at plus-1.01 per 90. If Palace got better with Vieira, Nice got even better without him.

In reality, there’s no one answer here. Hodgson probably had the team playing in a way that was lowering their ceiling (and maybe raising their floor), some of the players he was relying on weren’t very good, and most of the new players Vieira is now relying on are significantly better than the ones they’ve replaced. Minor upgrades in the way the team is playing and at a number of positions across the starting eleven can add up to a much better team. But this much? I still don’t totally buy it. Why is Crystal Palace so much better than last year and the year before? Truthfully, I don’t know.

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I don’t know why you all have let me tell you that I don’t know, over and over and over again for the past three years, but I’m so grateful that you have. Another thing I didn’t know: where I was going after I’d left my last job, back in 2018. The newsletter not only let me figure that out, it proved to be its own destination. It’s the most fun job I’ve ever had. I wrote discursive essays about the nature and meaning of “value”, the sustainability of sideline knitwear, the efficacy of playing soccer inside of a hollowed-out oil-tanker, and my freaking senior year as a mediocre Patriot League holding midfielder. (WHERE YOU AT, ALE BEDOYA?) I tried to come up with a different way of writing about a game that I love, and you all proved that there is a market and community that’s interested in all of the things we don’t know about the world’s most popular sport. To be clear: everything about this newsletter was weird as hell. I explained Liverpool’s silly 2020 season through Stray Dog, a lesser-known film directed by the great Akira Kurosawa. I interviewed a dude who coaches throw-ins. I led a piece with an image of Kirk Cousins teaching Philippe Coutinho how to throw a spiral. I wrote fan-fiction in which Sadio Mane and Christian Pulisic burnt down Frank Lampard’s house. What about the one about how pigeons wearing tiny backpacks predicted a Manchester City win over Chelsea? I mean, c’mon. Weird isn’t supposed to work these days, especially in this contracting, flattening industry, but you all helped make sure that it did work. I wouldn’t be writing a book if it wasn’t for all of you. And hell, I might not even still be writing about soccer if it wasn’t for all of you. 

Now, there’s no real elegant way to do this -- see: 1,000-word intro-essay about Crystal Palace -- so I’m just gonna do it: I recently got offered and accepted a new job. And in order to do the new job, I’m gonna have to shut down this iteration of No Grass in the Clouds. I’m devastated and I’m excited -- all at the same time. I can’t believe it’s over. I can’t believe it’s been three years. I’m really proud of that run, and I love you all. Here’s a picture that encapsulates exactly how I’m feeling right now:

Now for the administrative stuff. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll get refunded a prorated amount based on whatever’s left on your subscription. You don’t need to do anything. Substack’s got you, but let me know if you have any issues. If you’re not paid, then you don’t have to do anything. The free version of the newsletter will continue to live on in a new, abbreviated form. I’ll send out links to the stuff I’m writing for the new job, once a week or so. And I’ll also be sending out occasional updates about the book that I’m writing. I hope you’ll all stay on board. The podcast, unfortunately, is coming to an end for now, too. We’re recording the last episode this week, on Wednesday; it’s gonna be a mailbag episode, so please send in your most ridiculous questions. They absolutely do not have to be about soccer. Shoutout to all my Florida Panthers fans. As for the Discord server, if you have access to it, you will continue to have access to it. I won’t be in there much anymore, but my hope is that the rest of the community remains. It’s the smartest and funniest soccer conversation I’m privy to on the Internet, and I don’t want that to go anywhere.

As for what’s next, I’m going to start a new job soon and finish writing a book. I’ll reveal those new-employer details whenever I’m able. You’ll still be able to read me writing about all these same things in mostly the same way -- just not here. This is likely the last newsletter; I know that’s sudden, but there’s really no other way for it to happen. I considered listing off All of the Things I’ve Learned as a sign-off, but that seems counter to the spirit of this whole enterprise. As one of the original Panathinaikos ultras — either Aristotle or Socrates — once said after watching Giorgos Karagounis’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather take a corner kick with the outside of his left foot: the more you learn, the less you know. I’m updating my assumptions about this sport on a daily basis, and any list would’ve been outdated by the end of the year, if not sooner. After all, as soon as you think you’ve got a handle on things, Patrick Vieira and Conor Gallagher will laugh in your face.

Thanks for everything, everyone.