The best year in the history of Crystal Palace has been followed up this January with the worst week in their (modern) history.
The defeat to Macclesfield in the FA Cup third round was technically the biggest shock in the competition’s history and was the symbolic marker that signalled the beginning of the end for Oliver Glasner’s Palace; the high watermark of FA Cup glory in May crushed under foot by the ultimate humiliation in the first game as defending champions.
A few days later Marc Guehi’s departure was all-but confirmed. Within hours Glasner had told reporters he was not going to renew his contract at the end of the season.
Then on Sunday a defeat at Sunderland extended the club’s winless run in ten matches in all competitions and was followed by Glasner’s claim he had been “abandoned” by the board.
''We are being abandoned completely''
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) January 17, 2026
Oliver Glasner hits out at Crystal Palace’s transfer strategy after their defeat to Sunderland 🐈⬛ pic.twitter.com/J2V3xZxTKw
Even by the standards of modern football things have unravelled at a giddy pace. It is a brutal lesson in the rigged game, in the wealth inequality that has ended all hope of upward mobility.
Glasner will be widely condemned for his petulance considering he must have known the rules at a club of Palace’s size, particularly having managed in very similar circumstances in Germany, where he was also outspoken about the financial limitations placed upon his projects.
The outburst is even harder for Palace fans to take given that Glasner has decided not to sign a new contract, effectively taking the same path as Guehi while complaining about the process.
But Glasner’s long history of experiencing this phenomenon is exactly why we should cut him some slack. His ambition and that of his club is being stunted at every turn. The frustration is Sisyphean, forever pushing a boulder up a hill only to watch it fall down again.
Anger, thrown in the wrong direction, is pretty much the only option for a manager who finds himself as tied up, as locked out of the elite, as Palace.
Glasner reportedly has very little chance of landing the Manchester United job. It’s very difficult to see which big club anywhere in Europe would take him now, not on the back of a ten-game winless run that suddenly makes his Palace era look solid but unspectacular aside from the FA Cup triumph, and of course no well-run boardroom hires a coach on a one-off cup run.
Coincidentally on the same weekend Unai Emery also gave a surprisingly shirty interview after Aston Villa’s defeat to Everton, a result that, with far less drama than what’s developing at Selhurst Park, reinforced the same lesson about entrenched inequality.
Villa are not title ready and they never will be, or at least not without a miracle. They are dependent on Morgan Rogers, a player likely to be sold at the end of the season so that Villa can stay within Premier League financial rules that have arguably become even stricter since shifting from PSR to SCR.
They could yet get a Palace-style high in the Europa League this season, and the prospect of a Palace-style low hangs in the air.
Emery is beginning to get tetchy, repeating with increasing frequency the line that Villa shouldn’t even be considered as one of the top five clubs in the country.
It’s easy to understand why he is frustrated. Like Villa’s owners, his personal ambition is curtailed by an economic stratification artificially created by the football industry.
Emery and Glasner are locked on the outside looking in, knowing that no amount of talent or hard work can breach the gap.
For all we know either one could have been their generation’s Brian Clough – if it wasn’t for the fact that Derby Countys and Nottingham Forests can never happen again.
The events of the past week have been a chilling reminder of an essential truth both managers must accept. There will inevitably be days when neither of them feels like they can.
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