It’s sometimes hard to figure out what a team like Crystal Palace should aim for in the Premier League, but escaping relegation and pushing for a top ten spot does look like a bare minimum.
Roy Hodgson is currently delivering that but he’s also 73 years old, so there will come a time when he decides to retire and Palace will need to move on.
A recent report from HITC has looked at two possible replacements for the legendary manager, and it’s fair to say they would take the club in very different directions.
Eddie Howe is named as the most likely choice and it would be quite interesting to see what he could do with this team when you consider some of the attacking talent in the squad.
He would surely signal a change of style to include playing out from the back and being more attacking, so that would be a welcome change if it all goes well.
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The problem with Howe is you saw at Bournemouth that his teams weren’t brilliant defensively and it’s really tough to overcome a bad start in the Premier League when you’re leaking goals on a consistent basis, so there’s always a worry that it could go wrong eventually.
On the other end of the spectrum we have Burnley’s Sean Dyche – he would be more similar to Hodgson in terms of a pragmatic approach, but he would have a chance to work with better players and possible a better budget so perhaps he might go for a slightly more expansive approach.
It has to be said that Hodgson isn’t confirmed as leaving yet so all of this talk could be moot, but it does make you wonder where the club will try to go next.
Frank de Boer proved that you can’t just instantly switch to a passing style and expect immediate success, but his failures after leaving Palace indicate he may have been the problem rather than the club picking the wrong style of manager.
That means Howe certainly has the chance to be a success, but Dyche would probably be seen as the safer option if he became available.