If I may say so, you make a very good case and ask a fair question. To put the matter in context, the original poster asked whether supporters could expect more of the owners of the club and that is not a question that should somehow be thought to be in bad taste.
In order to move from 'group three' as you put it (where we are now) to 'group two' doubtless involves more expenditure than the present owners are able or prepared to make. If we had an exceptional scouting set-up (Bayer Leverkusen!) we might manage it, or given the pool of talent there must be in the South London hinterland, the necessary talent to make the progress might come from the Academy to which Steve Parish has certainly paid much attention. But there's not much point in having a vibrant Academy unless you have a manager who believes in giving young talent a chance- and the last manager didn't obviously.
That so much about the Premiership and what supporters might expect from their team is economically determined is something I have long argued on this site. By what means is it possible to break out of the dreary predictability of that scenario? Your comments make the point beautifully (Newcastle should do better than it does).
So it may well be that no Chairman could do more with the club than Steve Parish does. There are other aspects of the business besides how much money is put into the club- our transfer business is exceptionally unexciting and excruciatingly protracted and we have a problem that the Chairman and Director of Football buy players that the manager may or may not play. Apart from that and the need to improve the ground (not for the want of Steve Parish's trying), fine.
If you pay £2m you get a player like Jordan Ayew. Eze, at £15-20m. looks good business. Liverpool seems to be able to get us to pay top whack by our standards) for players it deems surplus to requirements (less so Kelly).The mixed successes, at best, of Sakho and Benteke don't obviously suggest that when more than £20m is spent on a player, improvement follows.
Where we differ is that I'd actually prefer the yoyo of promotion and relegation to the 'devil's compact' that we can stay forever in the lower reaches of the Premiership as long as we play the sort of football we played last season. But I know that's a heresy.

Edited by Elwissthebest (15 Jun 2021 4.33pm)

This happened five years ago, you say?
Not obviously productive.
As for West Ham, I didn't realise they had a scouting network. I thought they waited for us to show interest in a player and then bought him (Cresswell, Bowen, Benrahma).

This is a very good post in my opinion, although that's easy for me to say as my opinion is obviously very similar to yours. What you capture very well is not only the difficultly in moving beyond the glass ceiling but the presence of three ceilings in the one league.

If someone wants to put hundreds of millions into the team, they will hit the FFP wall. The only way around it for someone determined to spend big and make quick progress at Palace is to make a huge investment in the stadium, thereby increasing our revenue. If that can be done, FFP may allow said investor to plough large sums into the team, albeit as a one-off investment as at Wolves.

I agree that £200m on players is the likely minimum for a club like us to make a really notable step up (perhaps to move permanently into group ii as you put it). I'd doubt even the new main stand would achieve enough revenue to justify such an outlay on players in FFP terms - we'd maybe need to do the whole ground, so we really are looking at a very big investment indeed.

I'd say £100m plus for the new main stand, at least as much again for the AW, maybe more for the Whitehorse if we could do a deal where we build a replica of the Holmesdale with a new Sainsburys store underneath it for them, which is the only way I can see us getting to build anything worthwhile at that end of the ground.

That would take us up to circa half a fooking billion by the time the £200m has been splashed on players to play in a 40,000+ Selhurst, and all that would be to get into group (ii). How will anyone make that money back from that end result?

It's stuff like this that makes me question some of the criticisms of Parsh that I read. He is trying to turn us into a viable top flight club that lives within its means, even though those two things do not combine naturally.

There are already plenty of teams that have gone through that pain of building a new ground, even teams in lower divisions and they haven’t all been relegated.

My concern is that Parish over promises and under delivers. Covid was the perfect opportunity to build the new stand but there always seems to be an excuse for not doing it.

An easy question to ask I suppose is would you swap Parish for a chairman willing to invest half a billion?

My point was more about what is actually involved in taking Palace to the next level. Its certainly beyond Parish, and most outside of the mega rich.

I'm sure Parish knows that and would sell up to someone who could do what he can't, so long as he could be sure they actually would. That's why he sold half his club to the Americans.

Its a new world Covid means that money will reduce, the TV companies wont pay what the where when the new rights are discussed, i expect the whole of next season will have no or limited fans, i think it is a good thing we have so many unwanted players out of contract, we will know by Christmas if Parish has done a good rebuild job or not, have patience

“That’s a joke son, I say, that’s a joke.” “Nice boy, but he’s sharp as a throw pillow.” “He’s so dumb he thinks a Mexican border pays rent” “ “Son… I say, son, some people are so narrow minded they can look through a keyhole with both eyes.”__ Forhorn Leghorn