WOOD HEAPS PAINON DE BOER
Palace are STILL pointless and goalless despite glut of chances
THERE was a moment, just before the end, which encapsulated the utter powerlessness that can befall a manager at times and which left you nodding your head when Frank de Boer’s opposite number said yesterday that he felt his pain.
De Boer, in his saturated overcoat, was oblivious to the rain sheeting in off the Pennines as Scott Dann waited, unmarked, to receive a Yohan Cabaye cross from which it was easier to score than to miss. The defender missed — virtually the last act of a match which saw Crystal Palace create 23 chances and Burnley four.
‘Everybody in this room can’t believe we didn’t score,’ De Boer said and Sean Dyche agreed. But misfortune will not erase the Dutchman’s name from the history books. He is the first Premier League manager to lose his first four games without registering a single goal. The third-minute strike which condemned his side to defeat was equally far beyond his own control. A back pass Lee Chung-yong sent towards Wayne Hennessey was 20 feet or so short but Chris Wood required a fraction of that space as he clipped it, first time, over Hennessey. The goalkeeper seemed to try to head it. Yes: one of those days, for sure.
Dyche felt that the goal helped put some life into the visitors and what materialised in the aftermath certainly seemed the first sign this season of Palace’s potential.
Andros Townsend was the game’s outstanding player, making opportunities all over the pitch. Cabaye and Jason Puncheon issued instructions like leaders. Christian Benteke was intermittently dangerous, particularly when he manoeuvred through the Burnley defence around the 80-minute mark and shot side-footed. He drew an instinctive save from substitute goalkeeper Nick Pope, who arrived when Tom Heaton dislocated his shoulder in a fall on the half-hour.
The chances — two of which required Burnley goal-line clearances — only told half the story of the resurgent Palace. They showed attacking variety and assuredness, as Dyche articulated best. ‘They looked a more familiar side on paper and I was worried about that,’ he said. ‘They mixed their play well. They put lots in the box, cleverly, I thought. They looked like they knew each other.’
So why on earth have the club not seen this all along? In their infinite wisdom, they managed to convince themselves that De Boer, an individual who lasted 85 days at Milan, could take over a team of Sam Allardyce’s making and convert it into the Ajax of south London.
Dyche likes to quote Howard Wilkinson’s old adage about success: ‘Win, survive, succeed.’ By which he meant, ‘Get a few points, preserve your job — and then think about re-invention.’
It was to De Boer’s credit that he put pragmatism above philosophy on this occasion, dispensing with the threeman defence and demanding a less intricate exchange of the ball from his players. Of course, an extra man back there does not make a whole lot of difference when the defensive structure is as vulnerable to the ball delivered from wide, with pace, as Palace’s initially was. Mamadou Sakho, judged unfit for this occasion, cannot return soon enough.
Dyche had decided Palace’s defensive frailty was best exploited by deploying two strikers and two wide men. Though that worked for a time — Steven Ward racing past Joel Ward to cross for Sam Vokes, who headed a foot wide — there was little panache about Burnley. They defend in a way which has gone out of fashion, and James Tarkowski marshalled Benteke superbly.
De Boer must now wait to see if his willingness to adapt will buy him time. The problem, say many who know him best, is that he is less able to adjust to new cultures than compatriots like Ronald Koeman or Guus Hiddink. ‘He is very Dutch. More Dutch than them,’ says one commentator.
The fixture list is unforgiving — the two Manchester teams away and Chelsea at home, after next weekend’s visit of Southampton, a game in which three points are desperately needed.
The former Palace manager Alan Pardew suggested yesterday that De Boer might aim to think about the simple things. ‘Keep calm,’ he said. ‘And look like you’re in control of things even though you’re pulling your hair out when you get home.’