Manager Oliver Glasner hopes Crystal Palace can learn from their latest defeat – as they have done previously this season – when his side travel to Old Trafford to face Manchester United on Sunday.
The Eagles suffered a narrow defeat to Brentford at Selhurst Park last time out – their first loss in over a month – but currently boast a club-record stretch of seven Premier League matches without defeat on the road.
Ahead of the match at Old Trafford, Glasner explained how he plans to tackle Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim's tactical switches; the role he expects Palace fans to play in the North-West; and how he expects his players to react to their loss last time out...
I know Ruben Amorim from his time at Sporting because we played them twice with Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League, losing 3-0 at home and winning 2-1 away.
Knowing his system, 3-4-3, he played it there and we played it with Frankfurt. Both games neutralised us over many minutes of the game. Then in one, two, three situations would decide the game who takes the win.
I have a lot of respect and I admire Ruben Amorim for how he managed the first weeks here. When you go to such a big club like Man United and starting with this, it was not easy. But he went his way with all his determination and conviction.
I think now you can see how he wants to play. It's nothing new for me because I know how he wants to play from the tactical side and what he expects from the players in the different positions so it won't be a surprise, but they look like they’re getting used to it.
I’m looking forward to it. It will be an interesting game.
Premier League referee Michael Oliver was subject to online abuse following Wolverhampton Wanderers’ match with Arsenal last weekend.
It’s not just managers and the referees. It's not just in football, it's in any sport – part of the social media hype in the last years is that everybody can write everything they want, but nobody knows who is writing it. You can have hundreds of fake profiles, so it's not a problem.
I think this is a responsibility we all have. I think now it was the referee [Michael Oliver] and it was after [Arsenal’s Kai] Havertz missed the last penalty in an FA Cup game, I think – his wife was threatened on social media. We all have a big responsibility to avoid this.
I know myself pretty well. You are emotional and you feel that maybe a mistake of the referee decided the game, there’s a lot of adrenaline and pressure and then maybe you say, ‘it was the referee’, but at the end, he’s a human being – like we all are.
Maybe they will make mistakes, like every single player makes mistakes. All the managers make mistakes, all the sporting directors and chairmen, they make many mistakes. All of us make many mistakes, but that's no reason to threaten somebody or for abuse, because we are human beings. No one is perfect, so we have to accept it.
As long as no one does it on purpose, we have to say, ‘okay, it has happened’, and life goes on.
It looks we have more routine in our game, everything is more settled, but I still think that sometimes we fall a little bit back, like it was for me against Brentford. We were always talking about when we have the chance to play forward, let's play forward, and especially against Brentford, we had the possibility to play forward.
More often than not we did it, and this was the key point in our analysis, because it's the same: you can miss a chance, you can miss a pass, you can lose [the ball] dribbling, that's normal, but if we can play forward, let's play forward. If we can go forward, let's go forward. If we can run forward, let's run forward.
So this was the key message, and this is what we want to do better at Old Trafford, again, to threaten them in their defence because this is what we want, and not always playing in the neutral zone. We want to go into the important area – that's the final third, into their box. We need numbers, we need balls, and this we can do more directly.
We did it better, and it looked quite well. In the last game it was a little bit of a setback. We talked about it, and the training week gives me confidence that we will do it better on Sunday.
For me, defeats, failure is part of a process, and when you learn from it, it can be helpful.
But if you are complaining – about the others, the weather, the wind, the referee to give [Bryan] Mbeumo the second chance from the penalty, complaining about or blaming the VAR – this doesn't help you.
That's why we always look at what we can do better, what we can improve, what we can learn from this, without blaming any player, and then say, ‘why you made this mistake, why you did that’. It's the same, it's not how we work together.
And I told them, we had a great reaction and a great learning from the 5-1 defeat against Arsenal, because there we defended our box terribly – so we showed them, we trained it, and since then we did it much better, far better.
And so now, let's see if we can have the same learning from this [Brentford] game, when we have the chance, playing forward. This is also about confidence, and it's also no secret, when you play at Old Trafford, it's a big stadium, one of the biggest clubs in England, and there's having respect, but not too much respect, because when you have respect, or even when you are scared, usually you go back, but we want to do the opposite.
Let's see. The whole week we talked about it, training looks good, but the evidence has to be shown on Sunday at 2pm.
We know we can count on our fans everywhere, so I hope they can get to Manchester, because I heard there are train strikes.
We know we can count on them, and they will be loud, and they will support the team, and what we want to give them back is passion, belief, and showing them that we are there to win the game. This is what we can do.
We can't promise to win there, because they are a really good team, but we can promise that we will do everything to win there, and this, I think, our fans appreciate when they watch the team playing away at home. That doesn't mean that we win everywhere, but the mindset is the same.
Let's stay calm. He was in the right moment, in the right position, and had the right finish [against Brentford], and he did well. He had a good influence, and he's doing well in training.
He gets a lot of information now on how we want to play. I could see him quite often having his hands on his knees because he was exhausted in training. We had a very high intensity this week, and he has to get used to it.
But it's good to have him here. It's good to work with him because he has great skills. He's a good guy, and had a good start – but I don't expect him now to always score with his first touch, but he can do it!
We congratulated him for his great start with us. But on the other side, we said, ‘OK, keep working, and it was just the beginning’. We don't now expect miracles from him, so we don't expect he will be the go-to guy. He's 19, and did well at Millwall. That's why we signed him.
He's doing well now, but again, it's just the start.
I think the most obvious thing Ruben has changed is the system: 4-2-3-1, or 4-3-3, [as opposed to] Erik ten Hag’s 3-4-3.
But he’s also flexible. Sometimes, and even yesterday [against FSCB], he switched. He started with two full-backs as wing-backs, and then he changed and put in Amad [Diallo] as a wing-back, but more an attacking winger, and having just one more defensive wing-back. But [Diogo] Dalot and Amad scored both.
This is the structure – the first goal, the ball in behind, the second one in the cut-back, having numbers in the box. It's a little bit different, but since Ruben came in, they are one of the highest-pressing teams in the league. It's just what the data tell us.
Especially at home, we expect the pressure is very high, not giving us time, but on the other side, it gives you some space. It may be a little bit more difficult to find it, but that's how we’ve prepared. A
At the end, I think we don't have secrets after 23 games played, so everybody knows everything.
Also, to be honest, Wednesday when we watched them, we were winning. I was here in the meeting room and it doesn't count – it’s important on Sunday. And I think when they're watching us, they will win as well!
