Eight months to the day from delivering the greatest moment in Crystal Palace’s history by winning the FA Cup there seems to be no way back for Oliver Glasner. An abrupt early ending feels like an inevitability. Joy has turned to despair. Frustration has grown. Anger has simmered. Tensions have risen.
Another emotional outburst from the Palace manager, to follow an astonishing press conference just over 24 hours earlier, has surely created an intolerable situation after scathing criticism of the club’s hierarchy. The fans, too, seem to have turned on him, even if there is at least some acknowledgement that his anger comes from being dealt a terrible hand.
As full-time came at the Stadium of Light and Palace had suffered a 2-1 defeat to make it 10 games without a win, Glasner walked over to acknowledge the away end. He held up both hands, seemingly by way of apology, only to be greeted with booing and jeers from many of those remaining fans who had not already made their way out of the stadium.
But what came next surely means his relationship with the club is now beyond repair.
He walked in to conduct his post-match media duties and did not hold back. There was an outburst again about the lack of support in the transfer window. He and his threadbare squad felt “abandoned” he said, by the club’s hierarchy. More scathing criticism of the board followed.
The players’ “hearts had been ripped out” the day before a game on two occasions this season, he added. He could not comprehend how the club could sell Eberechi Eze and Marc Guehi the day before a game. It was clear he felt undermined.
These are not new claims from Glasner, but they were delivered with more ferocity this time.
Daniel Munoz and Ismaila Sarr will return for next week’s game with Chelsea and offer much-needed support to bolster their ranks. There are three days off — scheduled, rather than a reaction to recent days — for the players before returning to full training in the week, which should help too, but it all feels like window dressing.
What happens on the pitch is followed by a sideshow off it, the all too familiar story of working hard, offering determination and endeavour but lacking quality and tiring later in the game. The inevitable loss gives way to frustration and anger from the manager that this could all be avoided if the squad was stronger, if it was larger.
With Glasner confirming on Friday he will not renew his contract when it expires in the summer, with this latest outburst and the way the fans appear to have turned on him in the north east, it feels as though everything has come to a head.
Glasner consoles Chris Richards after defeat at Sunderland (Photo: Stu Forster/Getty Images)
There is surely no way he can be in the dugout to take charge of the team for that Chelsea game. Because there are consequences off the pitch, too. What message does it send to anyone when the manager is publicly at war with the club, when he is revealing the details of the way it operates and that any expectation of privacy has gone out of the window?
Why would any player want to join a club when there is so much uncertainty and the relationship between manager and chairman has seemingly broken down to the point of no return? At the very least, it makes it more difficult to do deals in the last two weeks of the window.
Glasner is emotional and impulsive and this reaction was borne from a burning injustice that he clearly feels over being let down by the club in the transfer window. But it has happened with him before, at Wolfsburg and then Eintracht Frankfurt. He simply cannot tolerate what he perceives to be unfairness and injustice. But his decision to inform the players that he was to leave in the summer came, he said, after he had learned of Guehi’s imminent departure to Manchester City.
That call, and these outbursts, risk completely destabilising and derailing Palace’s season.
No one will emerge from this without scars, and the responsibility is undoubtedly shared — Palace’s hierarchy have made their own mistakes too.
If this is to be the end of Glasner at Palace, then it is simply a shame it has unravelled like this. That he felt it necessary to speak out so publicly, that he was let down, and that the most successful manager in their history, for all his faults, did not feel adequately supported. All of that is regrettable.
It was not supposed to be this way. Even 48 hours ago, the hope would have been for him to guide Palace to success in Leipzig, winning the UEFA Conference League and bowing out as a hero after delivering the most incredible moments the club has ever had.
That feels as far away as ever now. Any chance that this is somehow turned around seems fanciful. Glasner’s reputation has suffered, the club’s reputation has suffered and the supporters who have made three long journeys at great expense in successive weeks deserve better.
The D:Ream hit Things Can Only Get Better played over the public address system after the game at Sunderland. It felt almost taunting, daring that something else would continue the chaos at this, the lowest ebb of the Glasner era, and, maybe, its final moments.