Vibes should be high for Crystal Palace heading into this season. They won the FA Cup for the first time in their history, ostensibly qualified for the Europa League, and gradually improved as the season went on in the Premier League.

And yet, no team enters this season with more uncertainty around their short-term future. As of publish time, Palace have been knocked down to the Conference League due to formerly sharing owners with Lyon. This has been resolved; John Textor has sold all of his shares in Palace, and is no longer Lyon’s chairman either. Their appeal of their demotion is still pending.

Palace also doesn’t know if their star players will still be on the squad come this September. None of Eberechi Eze, Marc Guehi, Adam Wharton or Jean-Philippe Mateta has been sold yet, but they’re all the subject of endless transfer speculation. If Palace can keep the band together, they’ll be favorites to finish top half and push for a European spot once again. If they depart, the club might not have enough time to find adequate replacements.

Palace get the unfortunate distinction of being the Premier League’s great xG underperformers. Their even GD and 12th place finish was a bit misleading. Palace were actually quite a bit better than that, and could have easily been fighting with Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest for top 7.

The team had an extremely unlucky start to the campaign, followed by a run of bad performances in the fall. But they improved considerably over the second half of the season, and the overall trend looked excellent by the close of the campaign.

Under Glasner, Palace have made the most of set pieces and have been excellent at executing on the counter-attack. While they’re not a heavy pressing team, they pick their spots well and create a decent number of shots off of the pressing they do. This is a good attacking outfit for a team of their budget.

While Palace do find good opportunities to press as previously stated, they are definitely much more of a defend in shape team than one that tries to go get the ball and force opponents into mistakes. Their PPDA is low and they generally do not care if opponents pass it around in their own half, waiting until the ball gets into more dangerous areas to engage.

While Glasner has shown some tactical flexibility in his career, he seems to strongly prefer a 3-4-3 setup, and Palace ran it almost exclusively last season. Eze was the most important piece of the attack, drifting inside from the left to play as more of a No. 10 than a left winger, while the central midfielder on that side of the pitch acted as a pure holder. On the other side, Ismaïla Sarr is closer to a pure winger, giving some space for the right-sided central midfielder to push up if they see an opportunity.

Palace’s wingbacks were extremely active, with Daniel Muñoz and Tyrick Mitchell showing an ability to get forward regularly and cover their defensive positions in transition as well. Like most back 3 systems, the fitness of these players is crucial for Glasner’s side. The outside center backs operate as the kind of CB-FB tweeners typical of back 3 systems, while Maxence Lacroix sweeps up in the middle as a traditional central defender.

This will be the shortest one of these sections out of all of the previews. There really is not much going on here.

Players out: LB Ben Chilwell

The only departure so far who played for the first team last season is a loan return for a bit part player.

Players in: GK Walter Benitez, LB Borna Sosa

They’re cheap backups. Benitez did not cost a fee, but he was really bad at PSV last year and I wouldn’t have taken him even as a free backup. Palace seem intent on running it back and I hope it works out.

The most pointless of these summaries, but we are completionists:

I could have picked a bunch of different players here, but the one that Palace seem most intent on not letting leave unless the bid for him has 9 numbers is their star central midfielder, Adam Wharton. He arrived in 2024 from Blackburn for what is probably now £22m after he ostensibly hit all incentives,

He was knackered after international duty last summer and tried to play hurt at the start of the season, to poor results. After taking some time to get healthy, Wharton came back with a vengeance for the second half of the season and was one of the best passers in the Premier League for the second year in a row.

The 21-year-old has been linked to Real Madrid by the rumour rags, and it’s easy to see why. This is Kroos or Modric-level passing in the center of the park, on Crystal Palace.

What Palace want to finally see from Wharton is the ability to stay fit over the course of a full season. He had 16 appearances in his debut campaign, followed by 20 last year. If they can finally keep him on the pitch for 2500+ minutes, they stand every chance of putting together an excellent campaign, even if a couple other star players leave.

So let’s talk about those other star players.

I’m sure Palace supporters are utterly annoyed at the way British media talks about Eberechi Eze as if he is already an Arsenal player. His current club may well be willing to accept a bid lower than his current £68m release clause, but no one’s come close to making one yet.

We’ve mentioned on this newsletter that we’re not a big fan of rich clubs plonking down that kind of cash for Eze. He’s already 27 years old and he takes a high volume of low xG shots. His passing and dribbling are good, but not so good that they should pay top dollar. Still, this is very solid production, and Palace will struggle to replace it so late in the window.

Similar things can be and have been said about Marc Guehi. While his production doesn’t line up with the extremely high fee Palace have reportedly demanded for him, they’re well within their rights to negotiate however they want. Guehi might not be a monster in the air or have elite passing production, but he is good at everything, including playing the ball with both feet.

And then there’s the big dude up top. Mateta isn’t the fastest, or most technical, or the best in the air. But he’s just an all-around solid striker. He gets into good shooting positions regularly and scores at exactly his xG. It’s a similar situation to Eze and Guehi: He’s not worth as much to rich clubs as Palace are asking, but he’s a really good player and it’s not a guarantee that Palace would be able to replace this production.

Someone (OK, the people who write this newsletter) might have argued at the start of the summer that Palace had an opportunity to improve their squad overall by selling high on these players early in the window and giving themselves time to line up replacements. But that’s probably not the case anymore now that we’re into August.

Run it back baby. Meet the new Crystal Palace, same as the old Crystal Palace. I’ll be very happy if this is the lineup they’re still running out in September. The league needs some stable clubs with a defined identity.

Our predictions are based on what the teams look like as these previews come out, and for that reason, we have no reason to pick Palace to finish outside of the top half. This is a good team. I hope it’s still a good team next month.

Prediction: 10th