In all seriousnes have a look at this article from the independent

[Link]

Of the 7 teams discussed 5 went on to stay up at the end of the season

No one is pretending this season thus far has been anything but poor. We are though six points from being 17th or 16th. Today we played well in patches. Our midfield was working well. We were missing SEVEN first eleven players. I have watched other teams in the EPL and I would be far more worried being a fan of those teams than I am of being a Palace fan ( of 55 years standing). Our fit squad is good. Of course we need more strikers and other positions too BUT we are far far better than our current results suggest. Anyway as a Palace fan does anyone expect a smooth ride? I felt quite odd a couple of seasons ago when things went so smoothly that come January I had no real fear of relegation!

A striker would be good, but tbh I probably wouldn't bother with any of the free agents. They're free agents for a reason. If they were good enough for this league they wouldn't be free agents.

Make no mistake, this is a shambles.

About 15th would do and not unreasonable. If he read my posts a few months ago we would be. But I and Bexleydave and a few more were too negative and couldn't see how he'd turn us into a dominant team with £40 mil net. God it sounds so badly judged.

Carlton Cole and Ricky Lambert have done us a favour than going down that road.

Agreed you are to negative.
He never ever said a dominant team.
Just wanted to win a few more games for half a dozen more points.

The players are, on the whole, good enough individually for the PL: under normal circumstances.They started badly because they were expected to play for a new manager in a totally unfamiliar set up. Under pressure, in particular, they could not have been expected to perform effectively when they were all so unfamiliar with the new set up, especially when the team was being rotated. No one had the chance to get familiar with working together.

Since then, loss of confidence and having to play the best teams in the PL will have impacted heavily on their individual quality, and also motivation. With no expectation of winning or probably even drawing is always going to slow pretty much any player down. Even 1-2% loss of pace will count enormously in this league. Drive and effort count enormously at this level. One or two players underperforming can, against the PL's weaker team, can sometimes be accommodated, but not a collective loss of drive.

If they can pick themselves up to normal levels of confidence against the teams after Chelsea there will remain hope because individually and as a team they have the quality. Last January, what helped, I believe, was the new players that had motivation to perform as they did not have the Pardew legacy to contend with. That brought the whole team on, eventually, under Sam's direction. The new players and Sam, being without the Pardew baggage, revitalised the 'Pardew crew' who then upped their game and together they all pulled through- fantastically.

FDB was not given enough time and he should not have been recruited to attempt to change a squad in a such a short time and with so little money to buy players. If is true that £40m will be available in January then one can't help but one wonders whether that money could actually have been spent in the summer (unless of course S. Parish et al had already decided that FDB was not going to be manager so did not want him to spend any money on players for his system.

Apologies for such a long post.