BY ANDREW MCSTEEN
Crystal Palace co-owner Steve Parish has praised the management team led by coach Oliver Glasner after his side made it through to just their third FA Cup Final in history.
Their 3-0 semi-final win over Aston Villa on Saturday at Wembley set up a date with Manchester City in the final for May 17 and came after the Eagles had not won their previous four league games in the previous two weeks.
A 5-2 and 5-0 loss away at Manchester City and Newcastle, respectively, were followed up by draws against Bournemouth at home with 10 men just over a week ago and then away at Arsenal last Wednesday, which saw the Eagles come back twice to secure a 2-2 draw.
“We’re elated. It’s amazing for what it means to the club, to the fans, to the staff, everybody. We’ve had five games in two weeks and after Wednesday’s performance, today was outstanding, it really was and I am just pleased for everyone,” said Parish.
“Those two draws were really important. If you go back to when we were trying to get promoted (2012/13), you remember the period where we started losing (Palace only won one of their last 10 league games), I said back then you just need a couple of draws.
“You’re not going to come back from two 5- 0s and beat someone 4-0 in the league. Those two draws, the one against Bournemouth, where we went down to 10 men and Arsenal, where we could have easily folded after going behind away at the Emirates after three minutes and with a semi-final coming up, we were excellent – we actually ran further in the Arsenal game than we have any game this season.”
Glasner, in his first full season as Palace boss has so far guided his team to the quarter-finals of the League Cup, an FA Cup Final and within touching distance of their record Premier League points total and a possible European place via league position, with another option of getting European football should they win the FA Cup.
This has all been achieved despite a league start which saw them not taste victory until their eighth game in, something Glasner put down partly due to an interrupted pre-season and late summer signings taking time to integrate into his team.
“Oliver is such an important part of it all. Some people say positive things, but they don’t live them. Oliver lives those things. What he articulates is genuinely how he is. He’s made all of us think differently – that’s what he’s brought to the club. He’s brought a positivity and a mentality in football matches that’s made all of us think differently about football and about this club,” said Parish about the Austrian manager who joined the club in February 2024.
“It’s kind of high intensity chess now, isn’t it? That’s what I call football now. You could see it today. You know, the way the two sixes sat. They’re always looking to get in behind those two players, and then you’ve just got your back four. But with all the tactics in the world, the players have got to execute and that’s what he gets. He gets them to execute his ideas. He’s very tactically astute and a very good manager.
“The players and the staff take all the credit. They’ve done an unbelievable job, apart from a little sticky start at the beginning of the season, which certainly wasn’t their fault and we’re trying to do what we can this season to have a better pre-season, and not make some of the mistakes maybe we made again.
“‘Stay humble’, he says,” added Parish. “We’ve got to do that after today; not getting in front of ourselves and carried away where we’re saying ‘we’re going to go to Europe’. We want to try and win the cup, but it’s going to be tough.”
PICTURE: KEITH GILLARD
