Ahead of welcoming Leicester City to Selhurst Park on Saturday, Crystal Palace’s Oliver Glasner delivered a pre-match press conference in which he admitted that the Eagles will have to prove themselves again despite excelling in the latter half of 2023/24.
The Austrian also discussed tactical changes, the return of Jordan Ayew for the first time following his move to Leicestershire, and how his new signings are settling into life in South London.
What did Oliver Glasner say?
“Before we started the winning streak, we were five points away from relegation,” Oliver Glasner pointed out to reporters as he addressed the media ahead of Saturday’s clash with Leicester City. Six wins from their final seven matches of the 2023/24 campaign turned their fate around, and the 50-year-old reflected that “we did a brilliant job so that everything was fine.”
“We didn’t struggle with relegation and climbed up the table. But in the New Year, in the new season, you always have to prove yourself again. Even if we had the same squad, it doesn’t mean when you have a great end of the season, you have a great start.”
Embed from Getty Images“It makes no sense talking about last season – different players, different environment – we can say now: ‘wow, what a win against Aston Villa.’ Four days earlier, they reached the Champions League and maybe they were not 100 percent focused. And then it’s past,” he added.
“So now we face Leicester, the champions of the Championship. Well deserved. They got promoted last season, played really well, and we have to focus on Leicester and not on the games from the end of the season.”
Having swapped South London for the banks of the River Soar over the summer after six seasons in the capital, Jordan Ayew will return to SE25 on Saturday. Responding to a question in the pre-match press conference, Glasner expressed: “I hope he gets a big applause from the fans, because he was a great player for Crystal Palace. But for me, much more important, he’s really an unbelievably great guy.”
“He deserves getting a big applause from the fans, and I’m sure they will do it, because he always left his heart on the pitch for Crystal Palace in the last six years. But of course, the applause is everything! It’s the only gift we give him!”
“We know about his quality, he always can score goals – he showed it for us. And it’s a new challenge for him. And so the applause should be the only one, and we want to take the three points,” he joked.
Crystal Palace’s hunt for three points may be disrupted by a defensive absentee, with Glasner confirming that Trevoh Chalobah will miss the Premier League clash through a muscle injury.
“It’s very unlucky that he was injured in his first session with us, but he’s a very good guy, a very positive guy, and you could also see it in this session that he has a lot of qualities. His physicality, his ambition will help us,” said Glasner.
Another key acquisition for the Eagles came in the form of Eddie Nketiah, with the 25-year-old signing from Arsenal. He was the subject of high praise during the pre-Leicester press conference, labelled by Glasner as “a very smart player.”
Embed from Getty Images“We had a friendly game in the international break and he scored two goals, so he has this feeling, maybe you can’t learn as a striker: how to move, where to move, and a great finish.”
“But I’m really surprised in a positive way how hard he’s working in training. He’s always one of those guys who is running most in the training session, having the highest intensity in his training, so this is also very, very positive for us, and I’m happy that he’s here.”
“Eddie can play different positions because he’s very smart, as I mentioned. He’s a different profile to Jean-Philippe [Mateta], who’s taller [and] more physical, whereas Eddie is more how he moves in the space and finding the space, and a very good technical player.
“And also it can be that we change our system. As I always said, it’s not about the system, it is our habits, our patterns we have in and out of possession and transition moments. We will find the right setup for us,” Glasner concluded.