Zaha will give his all to Palace cause: Hodgson
ROY Hodgson insisted Wilfried Zaha is committed to Crystal Palace ahead of their opening Premier League game of the season against Everton today.
The 26-year-old was linked with a move to the Toffees and submitted a transfer request ahead of the deadline, but he remains a Palace player.
Zaha was a crucial member of the Palace side last season, with 10 goals and five assists in 34 league matches, and Hodgson believes he will remain a key player this campaign.
“The fact is he is a professional. He realises that,” said the former England manager. “He is committed to the club and helping us do what we need to do to stay in the league. His training performance today was just as good as it was on Monday and Tuesday.”
Hodgson added: “We wanted him here with us. We were waiting to see what the outcome would be.
“It’s been a very good outcome because Wilf is still with us, so we’re looking forward now to benefiting from the skills he brings to us.”
Palace finished 12th in the league last season and nine of their 14 victories came away from Selhurst Park, where they start the new campaign against a new-look Everton side.
WITHIN the Liverpool backroom staff, they’ve been wrestling with one main question as everything else ratchetted up before last night’s Premier League opener against Norwich — and it wasn’t whether they can make up those two points on Manchester City to finally win the title.
Jurgen Klopp and his staff know it’s futile to worry about anyone else and that they can only concentrate on themselves. But that’s the issue. The grand equation is whether they can even sustain last season’s level.
Klopp fully trusts his team and how it works, of course, but the analytics department know so many different variables — from injuries to bounces to base luck — went their way last season. Many of the calculations, from various clubs, have City again winning by six points.
It reflects how the ever-evolving champions have set this brilliantly high baseline standard, in a way that just hasn’t been seen before. It’s not even that they’ve set new records but also a relentless pace that looks set to last.
They are conditioned to perform to such a level that the vast majority of teams — in any given match — can’t compete. To beat them, Liverpool — or maybe Tottenham Hotspur — are going to have to smash a significant ceiling.
In a way, this is also the theme of the entire 2019-20 campaign, with clubs up and down the league looking to break free of their boxes.
There are at least four clubs — Everton, West Ham United, Leicester City and Wolves — who really fancy their chances of making their way into that top tier.
Who honesty expected a transfer window like this when Josh Kroenke told Arsenal fans to ‘be excited’ back in mid-July? Club-record signing Nicolas Pepe provides the squad with some much needed incision, while Dani Ceballos looks exactly like the sort of player the much-maligned Denis Suárez was supposed to be. Kieran Tierney and David Luiz meanwhile strengthen the defence, undoubtedly the team’s weakness last season.
That their proactive summer activity stands in such contrast to the tepidity of Manchester
United and Chelsea fires much of this, with this ‘belligerent four’ hoping to prey on a particular vulnerability in both those ailing members of the big six.
Everton hope to blow their way in, with some of the most explosive business in the window. Leicester and West Ham hope to cut their way in, with some impressively forensic signings, and Wolves hope to lift their way in from that higher platform.
It was thereby a particularly good time for Spurs and Arsenal to become the busiest in the market, as both have made significant additions to their teams.
The only slight frustration with Tottenham comes with the lack of fulfilment from the Paolo Dybala pursuit. He would have been such a bonus in an otherwise good window, sure, but he also would have been the sort of signing that could have genuinely elevated them to a true title challenge.
He also would have been “a star”, of the profile the Premier League is now missing a little after the sale of Eden Hazard. The majority remain at City and Liverpool, but this is also why it feels the majority of pressure is on United and Chelsea.
As it is, Spurs and Arsenal have surely made enough enhancements to avoid the drastic drop-off of last season, but the same cannot be said of the other two of the big six.
It isn’t just about business, either. United have after all made good signings in defence, while Chelsea can’t legally sign anyone.
That puts even more emphasis on the coaches, however, and that’s where it gets even more interesting.
There is a strong argument that United and Chelsea — the two most successful clubs in the Premier League era — have the least proven managers in the division relative to their role, and maybe the least proven managers full-stop — as is the belief of a number of high-profile figures.
We’ll start to know from their opening meeting at Old Trafford tomorrow, but it does remain somewhat surprising that clubs of such grandeur have respectively taken effective punts on a manager in whose only success was in a league then ranked 23rd in Europe, and another who has only had one season in the game.
It wasn’t like Frank Lampard produced a young Jose Mourinho season either, or Ole Gunnar Solskjaer completely convinced over one half season in the Premier League.
There are, of course, various other factors explaining their appointments — not least the need to “reset” the clubs — but they still represent something of a departure from general best practices in the Premier League.
They were ultimately outlier appointments, in contrast to the integrated decisions at so many other stadiums.
That is best illustrated at the best clubs, since every move Liverpool and City make is now part of a wider plan but also applies further down.
It is the “holistic” approach the