every time I watch Danny Imray in the U-21's I wonder why he hasn't been given a chance, maybe it is a bit too early, but at least he can run into space and cross a ball decently and then get back to cover defensively, something that neither Ward or Clyne can do. They leave us hugely exposed, they get overloaded and then Olise spend way too much time trying to cover, (which he is still learning), instead of being further forward to get an early ball to get past defenders ..... thats the last of the armchair coaching for today

Jeez, calm down before you melt. This is top level professional football. If you can’t cut it you deserve what you got coming to you. It’s a fickle game, always has been. One season a hero, the next a villain. I also doubt these pages are followed by players earning millions a year and if they screw up on the field do you stand there shouting, “stop using hurty words you’ll ruin his confidence “. My guess is no, you won’t.

Saw Danny Imray 3 or 4 times last season when he was loaned back to his old (and my local) team Chelmsford City. You could see flashes of him being better than most of the players, though there was a time when he was dropped from the team. That's National League South, though he was coming back from injury.

Certainly he was very highly regarded before he came to Palace.

Given the recent announcement I am looking forward to Danny Butterfield signing on a short-term deal to play when Ward gets injured.

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!

I don't know if that's 100% true. Sure money helps, and it helps you be lazy with recruitment.

But plenty of examples of players that don't cost the earth.

How much did Brighton's first team cost? Brentford?

As you pointed out we've started to find good young players. Issue being the teams that are good at this have been doing this for years. And we've only just started. We're also not good enough at identifying them early enough.

All the players mentioned had a profile and (because we needed to) were first team ready.

As well as loads of money, we lack a long term recruitment plan. As much as it pains to say look at some of our neighbours stars:

Mitoma - £2.5m
Caicedo - £4.5m
Mac Allister - £7m

All bought for modest fees, all loaned out for a season or 2 before being ready for hte first team. All now worth a LOT.

Realistically we are light years away from them.

My main difficulty with our recruitment is the unbalanced nature of it which leaves glaring gaps in the squad.
In recent seasons Ayew has frequently occupied the position of the front 3.
I understand the need for competition and for his ultimate replacement, but did we need 3 players to fulfil this function?
We purchased Olise , have the highly regarded Rak Saki coming through and then went and bought Ebiowei.
They are of a similar age and are all left footed players who favour playing on the right and cutting in from that side.
They can’t all play in the team.

In my view this is excessive when we have the following issues

- only one out of form left back and two veteran right backs. The full back position has desperately needed strengthening for a while.
- two strikers who show no signs of being of the required standard
- for the bulk of the season weakness in central midfield where numbers (Luka, Jairo, Schlupp) have proved no substitute for quality.
- no evidence of a succession plan for Zaha with his possible
departure in mind

Where is the forward planning?

We did well at centre back where we had a number of ageing and unfit centre backs and to address this issue purchased 3 talented players who look very good already and also have great potential.
It would have been good to see similar foresight in other areas .

The club may argue they tried to address the full back and midfield areas through AWB and Gallagher, but when this didn’t happen I refuse to believe that there weren’t viable alternatives.
At the end of the season we have a large number of players out of contract who will need replacing along with the need for a new manager.
This also begs another question in relation to the input of the new manager into players retained or purchased leading to another potentially chaotic summer if there is a delay in appointing a new manager.

It is recognised that the club don’t have the resources to do everything immediately but there should at least be some evidence of a coherent strategy.