Pointless existence
De Boer and fellow strugglers feel the pain
Frank de Boer had a long list of the managers who stuck to their principles and were ultimately rewarded for not panicking when results went against them, although whether one of Holland’s finest players will have that luxury at Crystal Palace remains to be seen.
The most-capped outfield player in the history of the Dutch national team, and a Champions League winner, finds himself up against it at Turf Moor tomorrow, needing a win that may save him from serving the Premier League’s shortest-ever managerial term. At the Palace training ground in Beckenham yesterday, he ran back over the greats who had slow starts at big clubs, although none of them ever faced a reckoning at Burnley.
He recalled his old mentor Louis van Gaal, under whom he won the 1995 Champions League with Ajax, suffering two draws and a defeat in his first three Bundesliga games at Bayern Munich before doing the domestic double and reaching the Champions League final. He recalled his former Holland teammate Giovanni van Bronckhorst losing seven games in a row midway through his first season in charge of Feyenoord and going on to win the Dutch Cup, and then the Eredivisie the following year.
“It can change very quickly,” De Boer said. “[Pep] Guardiola lost his first two games when he started [at Barcelona] and everyone thought ‘What is he doing?’ Suddenly the players understand and the puzzle fell together and they got good results. I’m convinced if we do what we can do that it is going to be a very long time that I am here.”
In 2008, Guardiola lost away to Numancia and drew with Racing Santander before embarking on an 11-game winning streak in all competitions. That might be a tall order for Palace, who have lost three, scored none and have Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea among their next four league games. De Boer was a patient and thoughtful figure yesterday, but the clock is ticking for him and he made no promises that he would abandon the three-man defence that has been the fundamental problem.
“Now we have to think of what is most suitable for the team and also for the players,” he said. “I want to play like Barcelona, but we have not got the players. Then you have to adapt to what you have.”
De Boer distinguishes between what he describes as the 3-5-2 system and also 5-3-2, but there was not much mention of reverting to the four-man defence that Palace played in their survival under Sam Allardyce. Was he, for instance, about to persist with deploying last season’s right-back Joel Ward, who played every league game for Palace, as a wing-back?
De Boer said: “You’re going to play a system which, in my point of view, is the best way to get results, of course, with the quality of the team. I know that Joel Ward is not an ideal wing-back, but the board and all the other people at Crystal Palace knew. That’s why I first tried Andros Townsend there but then we were a little more vulnerable defensively. So at the end if you have to make choices at that moment you choose more defensive security than offensive security.”
The new £26 million signing Mamadou Sakho will not figure at Turf Moor and is expected to play for the under-23s next week in preparation for first-team action. Wilfried Zaha is still injured. De Boer said he had met Steve Parish this week and that he was sure the Palace chairman, as well as the players, fully understand his plan.
“I think the players understand it,” De Boer said. “They have also played sometimes with five at the back, not at the beginning but during the game. I am convinced they understand what they have to do. Some players have more difficulties than others, but that is normal.”
He picked up his drink and added: “My bottle is half full and I had the confidence before I signed a contract. We want to be a stable Premier League club.”
The problem seems to be that he fundamentally misunderstands the Palace approach to Premier League life, and casting a shadow over that is the five unhappy months he had last season at Inter Milan before being sacked. The perception in Holland was that he struggled with the language and was less adaptable to life overseas than other famous Dutch managerial exports.
“Inter of course was a very bad result, but you cannot compare Inter to Crystal Palace,” De Boer said. “The difference with Inter is that normally every game you go into, a draw is not enough. You always have to win. Here you play against teams and you know it will be hard and while you can get a good result, there is no panicking and sometimes you lose games. I want the mentality that you are not panicking but we are very disappointed when we don’t get the result we want. That is a mentality that you have to change here.”
De Boer thinks Palace have been close in their last three defeats and that “sometimes the coin falls the other way”.
He added: “You have to be very p----- off if you don’t get the result you want … [if ] you don’t get the result because the opponent is better, then you can say, ‘I agree, they are better than us’ and you can live with it.” He sounded very calm, although whether that attitude is shared by the club’s owners remains to be seen.