All this about 'ambition' and 'making a statement' confuses me. Have we been given special permission to ignore FFP rules then? I must've missed that. Attracting a glamour name to the dugout might make us more attractive to players, but if we can't afford them then it's academic really.

Presuming we'll be playing in both the Premier league and the real world next season, we will once again have a lower mid table budget at best. The question is how best to utilise that budget. We know for sure that anti football generally gets the points but is painful to sit through. We have no reason to think playing more openly will work but may well have reason to risk it anyway. What we know for sure is off the table is a big, glamorous managerial signing unless that man is happy to work with what we can afford, and if Benitez proved one thing at Newcastle, it's that a champions league winning manager doesn't make a lot of difference if the players are very average.

All of this is manager talk is speculation. We don’t even know for sure that Roy is going to leave at the end of the season. He may yet sign a two year contract!

There’s nothing wrong with aiming high and it seems people are so fixated and bound by a notion that we cannot afford a type of manager without actually knowing our financial situation in detail. Furthermore, who’s to say that Benítez, for example, wouldn’t be willing to adapt his salary if it means managing in the Premier League again?

I raise the Leeds situation again. If their owners had the mentality of ‘we’re in the Championship so we’d never be able to get/afford Bielsa’, then they never would have approached him and I’m pretty certain wouldn’t be a top ten Premier League club right now!

Dream big people!

NOT, if RH signs a 2 year deal i wont :'(

This operation, will make the 'Charge Of The Light Brigade' seem like a simple military exercise.

Remember it well. A good example of how you're not just looking for the best manager you can get, but the best fit for the club at that time. Not always the same thing.

100% agree

for those who dont understand it, in a nutshell

2014 - 2018 - Broke even in the PL
2019- sold AWB made 5m profit
2020 - didnt sell a player + covid, lost £54
2022 - release 250k a week, dont sell wilf - £40m loss.

we are looking for freebies or cheap young players this summer...if the owners would personally put in £50m for transfers we would be fine with FFP...lets see what happens.

‘Football isn’t instant coffee. You have to work at it. You must grow the bean, grind it.’ Ian Holloway

I take on board all your points but what I suppose I’m getting at is that we shouldn’t feel as though we should just accept we’re ‘little’ Crystal Palace who are always the underdogs and cannot have a go at moving onto the next rung of the ladder.

Someone mentioned the Venables era but for me that’s like chalk and cheese when comparing how the club was run then to now. The De Boer effort clearly didn’t work but I think there were evident significant personality clashes early on and credit to Parish for rectifying his mistake. However, credit also to Parish for brining in the name and calibre of De Boer with his philosophy. Turns out the 3-5-2 free-flowing attacking and entertaining football is what a lot of Palace fans are after now!

For me, Benítez seems like a realistic shout and would be an appointment I’d happily support.

Change the direction from what to what?

We’ve had be incredibly stringent with our finances in order to prioritise building our infrastructure over recent seasons, including the present, for the overall long term gain. This includes the brand-spanking new academy, upgrading the stadium and (I assume/hope!) a new stand.

I suppose this is the difference between us and other clubs who already have their infrastructure in place and can look to spend larger sums of money on players whilst we’ve been scraping around for loan and freebie deals such as McCarthy and Butland. That said, we did splash £20 million in Eze and there were strong reports of a £25 million bid for Sarr only in October.

The direction of the club, I believe, will be to focus on seeing fruit from the academy through effective, top quality coaching. It might however mean we need to sell some products along the way for the sake of the bigger picture. If we can bring in a top quality coach to do that and oversee the process then great.

I’m not convinced the likes of Dyche or Howe would be good enough to oversee such a fragile moment in the club’s history.

Not so as the last time we went for a big name manager was the ex England manager Roy Hodgson and the time before that was ex England manager Sam Allardyce both of whom were successful here.

Leaving aside Tony Pulis it was actually the small name managers like Holloway and Pardew that have been less than sucessful here so by that token we should be going for Jurgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola

We currently have a top quality coach. People can hanker after Benitez as much as they like but he's not coming to Palace. He has already said as much - he wants another shot with one of the big teams who can afford:
a) his wages and
b) to provide the transfer kitty he would demand.
He will want to mix it with Guardiola, Klopp and Tuchel etc. He can't realistically do that at Palace any more than he could at Newcastle.

Dyche will stay at Burnley if he's given a reasonable transfer kitty by the club's new owners (the jury is out on that one)

I wouldn't be too upset if Howe came. I reckon he'll have reflected on where he went wrong at Bournemouth and will address those shortcomings

like you said, im happy to be corrected by my understanding is that the owners could inject money via a share issue to overcome ffp, thats what usmanov (?) at everton seems to be doing. and i think that would circumvent ffp rules.

‘Football isn’t instant coffee. You have to work at it. You must grow the bean, grind it.’ Ian Holloway