With 48 hours to the beginning of the English Premier League, Tony Pulis has left Crystal Palace on mutual consent. It is not the type of news that was expected with fans already anticipating the return of Wilfred Zaha from Manchester United if former manager, Tony Pulis would have been able to pull it off.
Crystal Palace now has a caretaker manager in Keith Millen who will be in charge of their Premier League opener on Saturday late kick off in London.
Crystal Palace was in the bottom three November 2013 when they appointed Tony Pulis as manager after the sacking of Ian Holloway. Pulis’ appointment did little to bring much news until he changed everything in style which saw him sign Tom Ince (loan), Joe Ledley, Scott Dann and Jason Puncheon from Southampton as well as Wayne Hennessey from Wolverhampton Wanderers all in January transfer window.
The 1-0 win over West ham United was a catalyst in the change of fortune for the club. Crystal Palace in the 2013/2014 season under Tony Pulis then went on to win important matches against Everton, Aston villa, Cardiff and Chelsea.
Together with other points gained, Crystal Palace ended up in 11th position and their plan of maintaining that position or moving forward has just been dented by the departure of Tony Pulis on mutual consent.
Although the players are group of professionals and will do all they can to help maintain the team’s Premier League status but it takes more than the players’ commitment to achieve this at times. Even with the commitment, the role of managers can’t be ignored as we see the sudden drop of Manchester United from the top with the exit of Sir Alex Ferguson.
The in-house issues at Tottenham Hotspur since the departure of Harry Redknapp is another good example showing clearly that stability of a manager can go a long way in affecting how the strength of a team and their ability to either contest for the league or survive in the top flight.
For consistency and improvement, it would have been good for both fans and management of the club to hold on to Tony Pulis.
It’s sure too close to the start of the season and this might be a major setback for the team with the new caretaker manager probably trying to instil his own style of play into the team. With their first English Premier League match against Arsenal looming, fans will hope the team can perform well even without the guidance of Tony Pulis.
The first EPL match away to Arsenal will definitely be a tough one for the Crystal Palace supporters as Arsenal will want to kick start their season on a high. It’s always going to be difficult playing Arsenal at the Emirates but a change in managerial seat 48 hours to the match makes it more difficult to get anything from the game. Arsenal will be clear favourites and Crystal Palace will have to wait for a little while to see how the season pans out for them without Tony.
