Crystal Palace reached their first FA Cup semi-final since 1995 with victory over Reading on Friday night, but amid all the celebration of that achievement, there must also be a slight edge of concern. The four victories it’s taken to get from the third round to this point have been their only wins since Christmas. Their league form is dismal: just two points collected from their last 10 games, and while they should be safe with an eight-point gap to the bottom three, its not completely inconceivable that they could be drawn into a relegation scrap.
Most troublingly, this is a familiar pattern for an Alan Pardew side, although the slide has begun earlier than it usually does. Palace are the sixth team Pardew has managed. At each of the others he’s take charge of in the top flight, there has come a moment after around 50 games when it’s all begun to fall apart. It looks as thought it may have happened at Palace after 37.
There are smaller patterns within that general trend. Pardew has often been saved by sudden spurts of three or four wins in a row. Palace’s FA Cup run is perhaps analogous with West Ham’s in 2006, which masked deteriorating league form. The accusation at Newcastle was always that Pardew was a manager who was unable to arrest a slide once it had begun, and the figures seem to bear that out.
There’s also a tendency for things to tail off towards the end of a season for Pardew sides. In 2013/14, for instance, Newcastle lost seven of their last eight games. In 2012/13 they won just two of their last nine. In 2011/12 they lost three of their last four. In 2010/11 they won only three of their last 17. Charlton in 2006/07 didn’t win any of their last seven. That suggests, perhaps, some underlying problem in terms of preparation work.
It may not be entirely fair to blame Pardew for it, given he left the club at the end of December, but equally if there is some problem with his pre-season work, it can’t have helped John Carver: Newcastle went on a spring run of eight successive defeats before saving themselves with four points from their last three matches.
Isolating more precisely what is going wrong at Palace isn’t easy. Palace took 31 points in the first 19 games of the season; that is up to New Year. In that time, they scored 23 goals and conceded 16, as opposed to nine scored and 23 conceded in 10 games since.
Shots per game are down only slightly, but shots on target has fallen by more than a quarter, which contributes to a general picture of a side losing confidence. Palace were always direct, their speed on the counter one of their key strengths, but the increase in the proportion of long balls played, despite playing more passes, allied to the waywardness in front of goal, and a corresponding loss of accuracy, suggests a team that is less sure of itself and more likely to panic as a result.
Weirdly, they’re also conceding fewer shots, which might suggest an element of misfortune to their recent form or, more likely, is an indication of that lack of sharpness or confidence, with players not getting in the blocks they once did and not readily hurrying opponents as a chance falls to them.
The question then is why. Perhaps Pardew’s abrasiveness wears players down - much as Jose Mourinho’s seems to in the third season; with Pardew, without the salve of silverware, it may be irritation sets in sooner. Or perhaps it’s that once teams have worked out a Pardew side, he is unable to make the tweaks that can counter their countering.
Whatever the reason, the trend is clear and once a Pardew side reaches a tipping point, there is rarely any return.
Can Pardew turn Palace's fortunes around in the coming weeks to help avoid a relegation battle? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below
