Crystal Palace need a pragmatic Frank de Boer, while Marco Silva is under pressure to impress at Watford

Getty Images
Danny Murphy1 September 2017

Mamadou Sakho is a fine player and will add strength and personality to this Crystal Palace side - but is Frank de Boer pragmatic enough to move them up the table?

If he doesn’t deviate a bit from the playing style he has used in the early weeks of the season then he could be gone quite quickly.

Do the players believe in what he is trying to do, after so many of them helped the club avoid relegation under Sam Allardyce?

It is not time to panic just yet but the players have to be on board with what the manager is trying to do.

In my first few months at Fulham under Lawrie Sanchez, we had a team of footballers and we were asked to play a long-ball game. Take it from me - it doesn’t work.

Tough task for Silva

Getty Images

Marco Silva is a clever guy who organises his teams well. Watford have made some decent signings in the window - Andre Gray, Nathaniel Chalobah, Tom Cleverley. But I am not sure they can push too far up the table.

There are many teams in the Premier League who are at a similar level, so if they lose two or three games in a row, they start to feel the pinch and it can be hard to turn around.

In those cases, the manager has to keep his nerve and not make too many changes of tactics and personnel.

Often it boils down to luck. Can you keep your goalscorers fit, and your most experienced players? If they are absent, the task becomes very difficult indeed.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in