I too have been a supporter for over 60 years !

The ship is still creaking akin to a Tudor doors hinges as it navigates itself through pitchy seas.
Eze has flattered to deceive and his work out of possession is disappointing and diaboliocal.
Mitchell for me has been disappointing on too many occasions.
I accept that Gallagher has been a significant miss, however we purchase 2 midfielders in January and not started either of them.

Edited by Willo (12 Feb 2023 11.56am)

The thing that concerns me is that all of the little things that aren't going right could be symptoms of something much more fundamentally wrong. A few examples:

- A few key, younger players have clearly gone backwards. Mitchell never has a clue what is behind him at the back post, Eze and Olise a shadow of where they were at the backend of last season (Olise) and start of this (Eze).

- We cover the least distance of any team in the league.

- We haven't scored from open play in any of our last 9 Premier League games.

- In the last 5 years, we have the 16th lowest net spend. Of those below us, only 2 (Brighton and Leicester) have been in the PL the whole time. Leicester have sold players for a fortune in that time (Maguire, Chilwell, Mahrez..). We've let 66 players go in the last 5 years, and brought in only £81m.

- In those last 5 years, we've spent less than Forest, Bournemouth and Fulham. Only Watford, Burnley, Sheffield United, Brentford, Norwich, Huddersfield, Cardiff and West Brom have been in the PL and spent less than us in the past 5 years. Leeds and Southampton have spent double. [Link]

- We have 9 of our first team squad out of contract this summer, including 4 of yesterday's starting 11.

Add all that up, and the management of the first team squad looks broken in terms of the week to week output, and the medium term makeup of the squad. It suggests issues at the heart of the club that make it really tough to get excited about anything we're doing.

26th January 2010 - Enter Administration
2nd May 2010 - D-Day 1 - Survival at Hillsborough
1st June 2010 - D-Day 2 - Survival at Lloyds
7th June 2010 - CPFC2010 exchange contracts.

I don't disagree with you re the ten years mid table issue. We are the latter day Coventry / Stoke. But look what happened to those clubs.

We showed ambition in signing Benteke and Sakho but those deals were hardly roaring successes.

Palace have been a tough watch for a good few years now. But there was a level of acceptance that the ends justified the means.

Each to their own. Going down doesn't guarantee coming back up again. So I'm not agreeing with you on that bit

Old, Ungifted and White

In recent seasons though it does appear the majority of the sides relegated are able to keep themselves in the fight for an immediate return.

I'm not in the viera out camp, but can someone please tell me why we start with two keepers on the bench. What's wrong with using Ozoh or one of the other out field academy player?.

Our recruitment hasn't been good enough overall in making the transition from low block counter attack to possession based.

The club's also buried it's head in the sand to the loss of Gallagher's goals and attacking intensity from last season.

It all feels very half arsed and Edouard and Doucoure in particular look really bad value for money IMO.

With the injuries to key players and a squad that everyone identified as being thin I don't blame Viera for setting up the way he did yesterday. I expect he was over the moon with the point from the game and that was sort of reflected in his comments post match.