Defeat to Arsenal in the Carabao Cup quarter final will inevitably be painful for Crystal Palace but it could prove to be a positive for their season.
Prioritising one competition over another has not been the way manager Oliver Glasner tends to operate. The only reason he changed his entire starting XI for Palace’s 2-2 draw with KuPS in the UEFA Conference League was player welfare and there being another opportunity to progress in the competition through the play-offs even if the right result wasn’t secured.
Therefore he was effectively not sacrificing anything by choosing a weakened team.
But then they faced Leeds United in the Premier League on Saturday and Arsenal in the cup on Tuesday night. The hectic schedule is clearly taking its toll, and Chris Richards’ foot injury potentially leaves just 16 senior outfield players available for Sunday’s game with Tottenham Hotspur.
Victory at the Emirates would have put Palace into the Carabao Cup semi-finals, a two-legged tie with Chelsea. On the one hand, that would have been represented an opportunity to progress to within a game of winning the competition — a tall order but not impossible given the FA Cup victory last season over Manchester City and Community Shield win over Liverpool in August.
On the other, it would have meant more minutes for tired bodies and tired minds.
The mentality has shifted at Palace, Glasner goes out seeking to, and believing they can, win every game, regardless of the possible downsides. That has come into the club as a whole, although perhaps not quite to the same extent.
But Palace simply do not have the resources to compete in four competitions — they enter the FA Cup on January 10. Even three has been a challenge.
This time last year, Palace were bruised by Arsenal with a 3-2 defeat in this exact fixture before a 5-1 thumping at home in the Premier League three days later. The mood was glum. Palace had accumulated 16 points from 17 games and were 16th in the league table. That was off the back of the worst start to a Premier League season in the club’s history.
Maxence Lacroix gestures to Crystal Palace’s fans after the Carabao Cup defeat to Arsenal (Sebastian Frej/Getty Images)
Fast-forward 12 months and they are eighth with 10 points more from the same number of games. Yet their campaign has encompassed seven games more than at this stage last season. The drop off in performances, against Burnley, Fulham — even though they provided positive results — in the second half against Manchester City and at Elland Road are all at least in part because of that.
There are obvious areas in which this season is more challenging than last. They have not properly replaced Eberechi Eze, although he had yet to hit peak form at this stage. Yeremy Pino has been inconsistent in that No 10 position, and there is little competition for places due to injuries to Daniel Munoz and Daichi Kamada, with Ismaila Sarr away at the Africa Cup of Nations with Senegal. All of this and on top of it they are in an extra competition with the Conference League.
They have precious little time for training due to the schedule. That means it is difficult to put things right where they have gone wrong. Set-pieces, for instance, have been worked on, albeit from a defensive perspective that has clearly not been a success. the players are being run ragged — many are playing through knocks and their performances are suffering as a result.
Additions in January will come, and that should offer some respite, but even that would still see this squad stretched close to its limits. Those players who come in will still need time to adjust to Glasner’s system and intense demands.
These are all consequences of success. Realistically, this will enable them to put more focus on the Premier League where the table is congested to the extent that a run of defeats would see them quickly slip into the bottom half, or a return to winning would put them back up towards the European qualification places.
There were other reasons to be positive on Tuesday night. Walter Benitez kept Palace in the game, making a string of outstanding saves, while the mentality in the second half after an abysmal opening 45 minutes pleased Glasner greatly and should be a reason to believe that even when performances and results are disappointing, they can turn things around and not allow them to spiral.
They have recovered from bruising weeks before under Glasner. A winning run ensued after those defeats by Arsenal, while their club-record 19-match unbeaten run commenced after successive defeats in April, where they were beaten 5-2 by Manchester City and 5-0 by Newcastle United.
Defeat at the Emirates is not welcome, and should not be as it still represented a chance to win a trophy. But the silver lining is that it will relieve some of the pressure on this squad in the medium to long term. It is unfortunate that it has to be this way, but that is the price of their success.