After 14 months of failure in front of their home fans, Sam Allardyce has to throw his signings in at the deep end to have any chance of staving off relegation
Those bleary-eyed Crystal Palace players who had filed into the main meeting room upstairs at the club’s training centre early on Sunday morning did so with a sense of dread. The next few hours were spent revisiting the horrors of that first-half capitulation to Sunderland, wincing at the sight of panic setting in at the first setback against the division’s bottom club, or at the paralysis which undermined any hope of recovery. A ninth home defeat had condemned this side to a place in the bottom two.
Sam Allardyce and his technical staff exposed every hint of weakness up on the giant touchscreen television, pointing out errors and questioning his players’ judgment at each of the four first-half goals conceded. The exercise was not designed to humiliate. Rather, this was an attempt at exorcism. Palace are to go back to basics over what remains of the campaign seeking, desperately, to claw their way upwards. This was the manager belatedly taking this squad back to basics. The first team, off as scheduled on Monday, have since had time to digest and contemplate what must happen next.
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