There was general disbelief when De Boer persisted with the 3-4-3 system against Swansea
With his insistence on a 3-4-3 formation and highhanded approach to his new players, the Dutchman risks having the shortest managerial reign in Premier League history
Frank de Boer came to Crystal Palace this summer advocating “evolution not revolution”, which happened to be the same thing that Alan Partridge famously promised Tony Hayers in one of British TV’S finest comedy moments, although not before Alan had first endorsed the opposite.
The way things are panning out it may not be long before the 112-cap Dutch international is running through a south London car park with a major grievance and a large block of cheese on the end of a fork – figuratively speaking, of course. There is a good chance that after three straight defeats he will be sacked during this international break, making his reign the shortest of all Premier League managers.
Should it happen then De Boer will doubtless suggest that Palace were not courageous enough to see his brand of play through its difficult birth into a glorious maturation, and many will mourn modern football’s ruthless shorttermism. The problems with De Boer, however, go much deeper than his belief that a Republic of Total Football can be built overnight on the more pragmatic foundations laid by Sam Allardyce, Alan Pardew and other recent Selhurst Park predecessors.
The harsh reality is that players lose managers their jobs, and much more successful individuals than De Boer. One only needs to recall the fate of Jose Mourinho at Chelsea or Claudio Ranieri at Leicester City to see that if the dressing room is not carried along then events can spiral out of control. Harnessing your players’ confidence and faith is not a variable that lies outside the manager’s compass, it is a fundamental part of the job and De Boer’s track record in his short time at Palace has been lamentable.
In pre-season he decided that Martin Kelly and Damien Delaney would be banished to train away from the first team and were out of contention for his squad. Instead he preferred to begin the season against Huddersfield Town with his new 3-4-3 formation featuring two 20-yearolds among his three centrebacks, the new signing
Jairo Riedewald from Ajax and Manchester United loanee Timothy Fosu-mensah.
To put that in perspective, there were no centre-backs starting games on the first weekend of the Premier League younger than Riedewald and FosuMensah. In a position in which experience is crucial, Palace kicked off the season with two rookies who had 12 Premier
League appearances between them
– all of them for Fosu-mensah, who is, strictly speaking, a full-back.
Kelly was recalled to the bench for the game against Liverpool and came on as a substitute in the third defeat, at home to Swansea on Saturday. He might wonder what he has done wrong. He started 29 league games last season and played at centre-back in the wins over Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool that did so much to ensure Palace’s survival.
James Tomkins was left out then brought back. Fraizer Campbell was deemed surplus to requirements by De Boer and sold to Hull City, in a squad now badly short of strikers without the injured Wilfried Zaha and Connor Wickham. Andros Townsend had been deployed at right wing-back with moderate success during pre-season and was then on the bench on the opening day.
At the heart of De Boer’s failings so far has been the 3-4-3 formation that he abandoned at half-time against Swansea and which has proven spectacularly ill-suited to the players at his disposal. The Premier League-durable Palace of the previous four seasons have been an imperfect team in pursuit of an imperfect goal: survival in the division. At their best they have done so in a hard-fought style that cannot be replicated every week, but is enough to keep them in the top 17. Often the instinct in a manager to change radically a team’s style of play to a passing game is regarded as brave, not least when, like De Boer, he comes from a country that trademarked one of the game’s greatest advances in that regard. But at Palace it seems that they have a manager unable to accept the limitations of the club he is at and the nature of the annual battle they find themselves in. He knows the Ajax way, but does he know any other?
When the 3-4-3 system was tested in pre-season training at Palace, a team playing that style would be pitted against a shadow side in a more conventional 4-4-2 system and it was the latter which routinely won. De Boer pressed on with it. On one occasion the squad were surprised, to put it mildly, that there was no place in either XI for Joel Ward, who started every league game last season. Then on the first day of the season, Ward was brought in as a right wing-back and, like many of his team-mates, struggled with the formation.
With no goals scored in their first two games, and the system malfunctioning there was general disbelief when De Boer persisted with it against Swansea.
Dougie Freedman has come in as sporting director to try to offer the manager some experience of English football and to suggest viable signings in the last weeks of the transfer market. The club wanted nothing more than to make De Boer a success and would take no pleasure in sacking a manager after such little time, but then there are some who refuse to be helped.