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Crystal Palace F.C. - Let's put the FUN back in football!

Started on 18 October 2023 by ippe
Latest Reply on 8 December 2023 by ippe
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Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2026/27 - Q2 - Sh#tting the bed

The goal of the series was to have fun and I have failed in that as I'm absolutely livid at the moment.

Conceding from throw-ins seems to be the Crystal Palace special and lately the lads have started to concede from corners as well. I reacted as any responsible leader would, and fired our set-piece coach mid-game.

Premier League

We continued well since last update but then we saw the true mentality of our players. When sun is shining all is fine and good but when something is expected of them, they sh#t the bed.

Just look at this game against Man City, like what I'm supposed to do as a manager.





We are currently 4th on the league which feels like a massive disappointment.



Champions League

At least the lads have shown some spine on Europe by beating Bayern München. We also put ten past Ferencvárosi, which is something I guess.



January's transfer window

Multiple key players of the past years are whining and will practise their trade at the desert from now on. They will be replaced by players who are capable of performing basic tasks expected from professional footballers.

Player stats after first half of the season:

Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2026/27 - Q3 - Can't stop the bleeding

Its bad guys, its real bad.

We've lost 6/9 of our most recent games and even the palyers who avoided the chopping block have performed awfully.



We've fallen to 7th position in the league and the UCL qualification doesn't look that likely at the moment.



Champions League

At least the lads are still doing well on the Europe. Since the last update we've beaten two Italian top sides and managed to get 1-1 draw from München, so maybe these lads have some fight in them after all.





January's transfers

Marcos "Goal ruled out as an offside" Leonardo was sold to Leeds for £71M and Johan Bakayoko left for Benfica for £50M. I previously bought both of them but I had no problem of letting them go. Marcos Leonardo is extremely frustrating player as his attributes are very good but he isn't. Bakayoko did good job for us, but since we play without wingers he isn't needed anymore.

I activated Benjamin Šeško's buy out clause of £89M and brought the lad to South London. Let's see if he can finish his clear cut chances better than his predecessor.



I also signed Oscar Gloukh on a pre-contract agreement and he'll join Palace in the summer, hopefully I'm still on charge at the time. I don't remember what kind of wages I offered to him, but I was desperate and it was a lot.

Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2026/27 - End of the season report - What just happened?

How did we went from the above to this in weeks?



We were having a truly awful form during the Q3 and I was searching for answers from the players and from my tactics as well. I went back to what was (sort of) working previosly and opted to field the 5-2-1-2 system but adopted an Attacking mentality.



Premier League

Our form turned better soon after the last update, although in fairness things couldn't get much worse. We drew Bournemouth on the next game but shockingly managed to win all the other remaining 8 games!



Benjamin Šeško and Elye Wahi formed a flawless partnership up-front and suddenly we were able to outscore (almost) any team we faced. At the same time our defenders started to perform better and we weren't giving up that many easy goals anymore.

I forgot to mention that I loaned Lucas Gourna-Douath from Manchester United in January as back up option for Manu Koné but his solid and error-free play raised him from back-up to one of the first names on the line-up. His attributes aren't anything too special but unlike so many other our players he didn't make mistakes. Just solid 7/10 games weekend after weekend.

Our strong form at the end of the season allowed us to bag a fourth place finish on the PL. At the beginning of the season I hoped for something better but considering the lowest of lows we had to go through, the 4th place felt almost like a title by the end.



Champions League

I already provided a little spoiler at the beginning of this post, but let's see how we managed to get to the UCL final and see if we managed to escape the Camp Nou with a big eared pal to bring home to South London.

As mentioned, we managed to grab a 1-1 draw at the Allianz Arena during our darkest hours. At the Selhurst Park we played an even game with the German champions, but luckily we scored all the goals and won the game 3-0.

Next up was Newcaste United to whom we lost earlier in the League Phase stage of the UCL. At this point our form had started to turn on the league and the losses were piling up on Newcastle, so I started to have confidence on us. We started the match up at home, and were 2-0 up at the 10 minute mark and although we didn't manage to score any further goals on the first game, I though we had them at that point. We were the better team at St. James' Park as well and won the second leg 1-0 and progressed to the UCL semi-finals for second year on a row.

On the semi-finals we faced Real Madrid, which is now coached by Jürgen Klopp ( :( ) and have star power like no other team in Jude Bellingham, Vinicius Jr. & co.. We started the tie at home and at this point I felt we were already playing on house money, so I just decided to go for it and went with the Attacking mentality from the start. This looked like a mistake from the very beginning as Jude Bellingham scored on the 2nd minute of the game but around 25 minutes later we were alredy leading 3-1! Both teams scored once more, so we won the game 4-2.

Going to Bernabeu I felt we had still all to play for but Benjamin Šeško scored on the 4th minute and I felt I could breathe again a little. The even game ended on 2-2 tie so we progressed to the final!



On the final we faced PSG who have now won the League 1 5 times in a row. Their team is pretty similar than what it is now IRL with Kylian Mbappé running the show. To be fair I was more afraid of Real Madrid than PSG and I felt we could and perhaps even should win the UCL.

During the spring I started to take advantage of Benjamin Šeško's 194cm and 85kg frame and instead of building from the back, I just told our players to use Šeško as a target man. When I saw PSG's were 176cm Nuno Mendes with a jumping of ten and Marquinhos with his 183cm frame and jumping reach of 13, I thought Šeško would have a field day. Somehow, Šeško only won 57% of his headers in the game, so this wasn't the case.

Nevertheless, the game was even with each side having their chances to score but neither team managed to create clear-cut chances. We went to OT with a scoreless draw but I really felt we should win the game. Mbappé scored soon and PSG managed to score again on the first OT frame and I started to feel we had bottled our chances. Šeško finally scored and made the score 1-2, but sadly it was too little too late and we lost the final.

I think our tactics were spot on and despite going with Attacking mentality I dropped our defensive line and line of engagement to Lower to allow Mbappé as little space to run as possible. We didn't concede any goals during the regular time, so I feel I did all I could to beat PSG, but at least on this occasion, they were just little better than us.



Stats of the season 2026/27

The season of extreme lows and highs has finished and my heart rate has returned to normal. The season ended on high note, so I'm pleased about how the things went.

On the league we beacame 4th for a 3rd time in a row and scored the most goals. I feel the 4th place is sort of minimum for us at this point, although the 5th placed team would still qualify for UCL thanks to the new qualification rules.

On the Europe we were so close to win the biggest (?) trophy on club football and while we were bested this time, I'm confident our time will come. Our oldest starter is 27-years-old and you could say that our oldest key player Elye Wahi is 24-years-old, so we have all the time in the World.

Player stats

You can find our player stats for the season on the spoiler below.


I felt the signing of Benjamin Šeško turned our season around. He lit the fire on Wahi's belly as well and managed to get an avg rating of 7.39 in the league and 7.49 on the UCL.

I had my issues with Iván Fresneda during the season, but when we got hot, so did he. He has developed quite nicely with us and just as an example, his crossing attribute has improved by 3 during the time he has been with us. He assisted 11 goals in the league and on the UCL, so his end product has developed quite a bit.



Team stats can be found on the spoiler below

We shifted away from the posession oriented style and aimed to be more direct making the best use of Šeško's strong physical attributes and that shows on the team stats.

Although the season ended on high, the awful dip of form is quite evident when looking the whole season's stats and the 57 goals conceded was the worst tally during my time with Palace.


Transfer plans

Our flurry-haired owner has provided us plenty of money for the summer, and I'm looking to spend big.



Actually I have already spent big and still have that £137M on top of that.

I was particularly fed up with Ousmane Diomande during our woefull spell of form as I felt he was doing so many unforced errors. He passed the ball to opponents under no pressure, he tried to dribble past opponents near our own box and perhaps most annoyingly of all, he didn't seem to be capable of marking his opponent no matter what. When I saw his passing of 15 and vision of 17 when I signed him a few seasons ago, I felt he could be a game breaking player with his passes but that hasn't been the case at all. He improved during our hot streak but I had already signed a new defender before that.

The defender in question is António Silva, who'll join us in the summer for £57M from Benfica. He has better attributes in anticipation, concentration, decisions and positioning than Diomande and I hope he could solidify our back end a little.



I have also signed a Romanian regen wonderkid by the name of David Chişu for a mere £3M. He has amazing technique (19!!!) and flair. You can call me crazy but I reckon I'll try to make him a left wing back for us. If we could develope his Marking, Tackling and Positioning even by 2-3 points each, I think he could dominate from that position.



I had already agreed to sell Michael Olise for £50M during the January's transfer window and I think his and also Eberechi Eze's time at the club is over. Matheus França doesn't have a role in this team either, so I'll likely sell all the remaining original Palace players during the summer.

It is what it is, but if we aim to win major trophies as is the plan, I cannot afford to be sentimental and whilist Olise and Eze aren't bad players, they just don't fit my tactical plans at the moment.

I have deep enough squad, so every newcomer is either a clear improvement for our first team or a wonderkid for the future.
ippe's avatar Group ippe
1 yearEdited
Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2027/28 - Start of the 5th season at Selhurst Park

Let's start with the transfer since I was too lazy to write a seperate post about them.

Transfers

We signed 4 players for the first team and as I've already shared the profiles of António Silva (£57M) and Oscar Gloukh (Free signing), I won't talk about them too much.

Our star signing of the summer was João Veloso from Benfica for £63M. I had scouted the 22-year-old attacking midfielder for a while and he was just too exciting to player to not to sign. As a relatively tall, skilled and goal-hungry midfielder he reminds me of Kaká, who was one of my favourite players back in the day.

The last first teamer signed was a 18-year-old Dutch regen wonderkid by a name of Metin Abazi. He looks like a great DLP (D) and will get plenty of game time in the future.

I signed couple of youngsters for youth team as well, but we'll talk more about them if they'll become first teamers one day.

Player profiles of the new signings can be found on the spoiler below:


Michael Olise left for Dortmund for £36M, Matheus Franca joined Wolves for £22M, Pascal Struijk moved to Napoli for £48M and Juan Sforza joined Real Sociedad on loan with a buy option for £50M after he has played 25 games for them.

Premier League

We seem to be stuck at 4th position which is not too bad considering where we started, but I'd like to see some improvment.

After 9 games we are again 4th on the league. Let's see how the season goes. I have confidence in the team.



[img]https://gyazo.com/719a595201a9dcf75fd834c2c98c6f7e[/img]

Champions League

Our European campaign has started strong and once again we seem to be perfroming better on the Europe.

So unlucky in last season's Champions League Final! That could have been history made! A great start to it again this season, but unfortunate in the league against the title holders and Norwich in particular. Keep it going!
1
All I want for Christmas is Tchou



ippe's avatar Group ippe
1 yearEdited
Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2027/28 - Halfway season report

It feels like I've stated this on almost all of my posts, but we have played relatively well since the last update.

Premier League

Our record for the last 10 PL games is 6-3-1, which I feel has been the case for more or less the last 4 seasons. Perhaps my aproach can only take the team so far and we have reached the pinnacle. Then again we have done so well in the UCL and I feel we should be able to make progress in the league as well.

You can already see a shift in mentality when we are signing new players as few of our latest signings have been slightly older and way complete players than what I would have signed 2-3 seasons ago.

I also aim to take somewhat realistic aproach to FM and I refuse to abuse bugs, glitches, replaying games etc. to gain advantage as using those kinds of dastardly deeds would take the fun out of the game for me.



Anyway, at halfpoint we are 2nd on the league 1 point behind the league leading Arsenal, who have in fairness played 1 less game than ourselves.



I have tailored my tactics a bit as well, and we now deploy a 4-1-2-1-2 system. Midfielders are the best part of our team, especially after Aurélien Tchouameni joins and this system aims to make the best out of them.

Would you people play Tchouameni as a DLP (D) or further on the pitch? I feel his attributes could go to waste as a DLP (D) but then again he looks very tasty at that role. He would certainly be an excellent BBM as well, so maybe I'll try him at different roles and see what works best.



Champions League

For once, we have actually performed slightly worse on the Europe than on the domestic soil as we only got goalless draws against AC Milan and Liverpool. We are still 3rd on the League Phase and have two easier games remaining, so we will once again qualify to knockout stage with easy barring some catastrofic events.



Halfway point player stats can be seen on the spoiler below:

ippe's avatar Group ippe
1 yearEdited
Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2027/28 - Q3 Report - Same old, same old

We've won 7 out of our last ten PL games, drawing once and losing twice, so our points per game stat is probably the same it has been for a long time now.

This is not too bad as we are once again on pace to achieve a top 4 finish, but its not going to be good enough for the title.



At least it looks like we have the top 4 finish in the bag, barring some sort of catastrophic free fall, which to be fair, we have went through once already.



I made some rather radical tactical changes after losing to Leicester and opted for a 4-3-3 system with 3 strikers and a "workhorse" midfield. I'm a Liverpool fan and this tactic reminds me of Klopp's Liverpool with Salah, Mané and Firmino up top. Although Salah and Mané were marked as wingers, they often took positions very centrally and hardworking midfield offered balance for the team meanwhile wing backs provided the width.



Ethan Nwaneri has been an excellent player in this system and has 12 goals and 6 assists in the league with an avg rating of 7.41. João Veloso has performed better at striker than as an AM, despite him having no knowledge of playing up top. I have moved him to play the central striker role and changed his role to False-9 since taking the screenshot, I reckon this role would be even better for him.

The main reason behind the change in tactics was that our best performer only had an avg rating of 7.19 during the first half of the season. We are at the stage where the squad has some really really talented players in it, and if nobody is performing better than 7.19, then its probably my fault and I need to change things up. Considering we went 7-1-1 in 9 games with the tactic, I probably made the right decision.

Champions League

We finished 3rd on the League Phase and will face Real Sociedad in a R16 matchup. They are currently 9th in the La Liga, so I fancy our chances here.

ippe's avatar Group ippe
1 yearEdited
Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2027/28 - End of the season report

We have finished our 5th season with Crystal Palace, so its time for the season's final report. Let's go through the end of the season in chronological other, rather than by competiton as we usually do.

We continues our journey by a visit to Real Sociedad's Reale Arena as we faced the Basques in the R16 match up in UCL. We started the draw slowly by drawing 1-1 at the away game, but we got a break in the fixture list as we only had to face Bournemouth in the middle of our European matchup. We managed to beat Bournemouth easily and played well at home against Sociedad beating both teams 3-0.

Next up were two PL games against Brentford, who ended up finishing 8th and against Reading, who came last in the league. Neither team posed a serious threat to us, although Brentford had been a diffcult opposiotion for us before.



On the UCL we were drawn against Chelsea. I think its pretty boring to play against domestic teams, but what can you do. Maybe the players were little bored as well, as we lost the 1st game of the tie 2-0 at the Stamford Bridge. We have been performing well at home in Europe, but I wondered if we'd make it too difficult to qualify this time around.

We had to play our main rivals Brighton in the middle of the Chelsea fixtures and as we were pushing the league leading Arsenal on PL, I couldn't rotate too much against the Seagulls. We played one of our best games to date against Brighton, as Eberechi Eze scored whopping 5 goals and we beat them 8-0. After the game I felt confident we could batter Chelsea in a similar matter and the lads managed to do just that as Chelsea offered little threat to us at the Selhurst Park in a game which we won 5-0.



The league leading Arsenal had enjoyed strong form too but they had drawn one game, whereas we had won all of our games, so we were trailing them by 2 points We would face Arsenal soon, so at this point the title was in our own hands!

The disaster struck on the next game however, as we only got draw against Nottingham in a rather uneventfull game, which was one of our dullest performances over the season. Luckily Arsenal only drew against Newcastle themselves, so we still trailed them by only two points before our meeting.

The game took place at the Emirates Stadium, so we had a tough test ahead of us. Our task turned near impossible as Aurelién Tchouameni took a second straight red since joining us and I though we had bottled it. However, Eze scored soon after the red card and we managed to grab the win via defensive 4-4-1 system and a bit of luck.



So we had three games left on the PL and the title would be ours if we could just win all the games! Our remaining opponents were Manchester United, Newcastle and Tottenham, so the task wasn't going to be easy.

After Arsenal we faced Manchester City on the UCL semi-finals and this time we started the tie at home. We only managed to draw our home game after Erling Haaland capitalised from our easy mistake and our strikers could only score once despite having plenty of chances. To make matters worse, we lost our first choice goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili for rest of the season due to broken hand.

We had a very difficult game against Manchester United next and despite the fact that both teams generated near 2,00 worth of xG, the game only saw one goal, which was luckily from Elye Wahi for the good guys! At the same time Arsenal won their game 4-3 agains Leicester via 90+2 minute winner, so they weren't giving up either.

Next up was the second leg of the UCL semi-finals against Manchester City. As against United, both teams got around 2,00 goals of xG, but this time the Mancunians got the better end of the bargain, and won 3-2. I hoped to get back to the final after last years extra-time disappointment, but as we were two games away from winning the league, there was no room for sadness.



Our penultimate game of the season was away at Newcastle and the lads were eager to put our defeat against Man City behind them as we took an early 0-2 lead via Wahi and João Veloso, whose debut season has been average at best considering his talent. Harvey Barnes scored for Newcastle at the 90th minute, but we won the game and at the same time Arsenal were kept to scoreless draw against Aston Villa at Emirates, we were leading the league by three points and had much better goal difference than Arsenal thanks to batterings of Brighton and Reading.

On the final day of the season Arsenal faced our main rivals in Brighton and we faced their fiercest rivals in Tottenham, so there were for some mixed feelings amongst the oppostions fans for sure.

Wahi scored soon after the game started and the Arsenal academy graduate Ethan Nwaneri scored before the half-our mark to secure our PL title! Arseanal collapsed and lost to Brighton so we ended up winning the league by 6 points!





Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2027/28 - Player stats and future plans

Considering we won the PL and got to the semi-finals on UCL, there were plenty of players who performed well over the season.

Player stats of the season can be found on the spoiler below:


Ethan Nwaneri had a great season and has an avg rating of 7.44 in the league. He complained about playing time early in the season, and I challenged him to hav an avg rating of +7.20 if he wants to be a key player and he delivered.

Elye Wahi did well too and dropped Benjamin Šeško to bench. Šeško was actually only our 4th best striker, as wonderkid Tue Lund took massive strives in his development and made the most out of his opportunities.

It is hard to find players who did badly, but I expected more from Giorgio Scalvini, who was dropped to bench by Ousmane Diomande later in the season.



Future plans

The save game has went for 5 years, which is a nice number for a beta save. I have a young squad and decent motivation to continue, so I say let's keep the good times rolling.

We finally won the PL and having already been on the UCL final, I feel winning that trophy would be next on our priority list. Of course, I want to win the PL again to prove that the first time wasn't just luck.

Transfers dealings

We have plenty of money to spend, so that won't be an issue.



Adrien Truffert has been transfer listed by request for a season, as he got mad starting only 6/10 games, or something dumb like that. Patrick Dorgu was one of our better performers, so Truffert can complain all he wants. I bought the French LB for £53M, so I won't sell for cheap.

Samed Baždar is our 5th striker, is valued around £60M and wants to leave. I can sell him for a high sum too, so he can go.

I have pretty great squad and there aren't many players who make it better, so I won't be throwing money around willy-nilly.

I wouldn't be against signing players like Aurélien Tchouameni in the future as well. I didn't plan to sign him, but when I saw he was listed as Real Madrid apparently didn't have a place for him in the starting lineup. I dropped £70M him and asked no further questions.

I have plenty of money to throw around and if I see superstars being available for a reasonable price, I'm ready to swoop in.

I don't especially want to nor I need to buy any more younger players, so I'd actually prefer a complete player instead of a pure project at this point.

I'll take my time with the transfers and provide an update on a further date.

Thanks for reading and have fun!
The first signing of the summer is in the bag!

I tried to sign Jude Bellingham, but he didn't want to join the team, but I reckon Lamine Yamal is a decent consolation price.



Could he work as a Trequartista at AM?

ippe's avatar Group ippe
1 yearEdited
Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2028/29 - Q1 Unleash the Eagles!

We've had a rather good start for the new season, but before we dive into that, let's see what happened during the summer.

Transfers

We had plenty of money but not that many positions to upgrade. Lamine Yamal was the star signing of the summer and £111M was a sizeable fee to pay, but so far he has been excellent.

I hadan offer of £198M accepted for Jude Bellingham but in the end, he decided to stay with Real Madrid despite agreeing to our contract offer as well.

I made two signings after Yamal, but they were much cheaper transfers. Firstly we signed German regen youngster Alessandro De Vito for £22,5M. He is already very good defensive midfielder and with the age of 20 will surely only get better.

Our second signing was a left back Miloš Kerkez from Bournemouth. Six years in the save game he is a great professional who has nice physical and technical attributes and crucially had a £47,5M release clause. He'll likely be a back up to Patrick Dorgu, but if he performs well, the spot is there for the taking of course.

Amongst the sold players were Taylor Harwood-Bellis (Köln £42M), Samed Baždar (Aston Villa £59M), Connor Gallagher (Leeds £26,5M), Juan Sforza (Real Sociedad £49,5M), Adrien Truffert (Inter £28,5M), Zeno Debast (Bordeaux £20M), Agustin Giay (Newcastle £40M), so despite spending £111m on Yamal and £181M altogether, we actually made a net profit of over £85M on transfers.

We have enough money to buy more or less anyboddy we want, and maybe I'll try to lure Bellingham to South London later on the season.

Profiles of the new signings can be found below:


Premier League

It feels like we have achieved a "critical mass" what it comes to transfers, and we are certainly on a roll on football pitches as well.

We have won all our 9 PL games so far, and having already faced Arsenal, Tottenham, Man United and Newcastle, the start hasn't been particularly easy either.



Pretty much the whole starting lineup has done well, but especially Benjamin Šeško, Ethan Nwaneri, Iván Fresneda and Lamine Yamal have been red hot right form the start.



As a result we are leading the league by 5 points over Chelsea and Arsenal.



Champions League

We have won all of our UCL games as well, so things have been good around here.



We were already eliminated from the EFL cup by ManU, who has been the only side avoiding a defeat against us this season.



Tactics

I have settled for this attacking 4-1-2-1-2 diamond tactic. MCR could be a BBM (S) as well. Yamal didn't work as a Treaquartista, but AM (At) seems to be made for him.

Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2028/29 - Halfway season report

Premier League

The form has continued to be extremely strong and we are still unbeaten but not flawless anymore. We've been close to losing or drawing few more games, but the lads have found ways to score late in the games.



As a result, we are leading the league by 8 points halfway through. I'm not going to get ahead of myself, so let's just say we are set well for the second half of the season, where we have a chance to repeat as PL champions.



At the moment we have gone 33 games unbeaten in the league.



Champions League

We actually lost a game on UCL, but I'm not too bothered to be fair.



Player stats on the spoiler below:

Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2028/29 - Q3 - On autopilot

I've played 3/4 of the season, so its time for another report.

Premier League

Sadly our invincibes bid ended against Arsenal (who else), but we are well set for the remaining 10 league games as the form has continued to be very strong.



Last season we won the league after collecting 85 points and this time around we have 78 points after just 29 games, so it appears we are going to repeat as PL champions.



Champions League

We are once again facing Bayern München in the UCL knockout stage. I actually did a little bit of transfer business with Bayern as I bought Jamal Musiala in January, mainly because I had plenty of money and Jude Bellingham once again opted to stay with Real Madrid despite already having agreed our contract offer.





Funnily enough, we actually bought Musiala for exactly 1000 times more than what Bayern had paid for him to Chelsea a decade ago. Decent return of investment for Bayern.

You are reading "Crystal Palace F.C. - Let's put the FUN back in football!".

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