Yes defo start Ayew over ED or Mat, only get a new striker if one of them leaves.

I do rate Steve Cooper highly after his exploits at Swansea and Nottm Forest, not forgetting his successes with the England U17 team.

I think its impossible for Steve Parish not to offer Roy and his team another year. Its wether Roy wants it or not. Roy has galvanised the team and got them playing creative exciting football. You shouldn't fix something when it's not broken.

Roy has made it clear that it’s the media who are retiring him but as far as he’s concerned he’s happy to continue with a project if of sufficient interest.
That project may as well be Palace.
People make assumptions because of his age.

I was reading an interview with Allardyce about why he wants to continue.
Without football he said his day to day decisions were limited to whether to have a poached egg on toast for breakfast, when to go for a walk around the reservoir and what to watch on Netflix.

To football people who still feel they can contribute that may not be enough.
I would put Roy in this category and it’s beyond dispute that the current squad have responded positively to him.
Age isn’t everything and younger managers such as Lampard, Gerrard, Vieira and Marsch haven’t exactly got their players outperforming or indeed even fulfilling their potential.

This was a brutally tough PL season. Next season is much weaker with Luton, Sheffield, and Burnley replacing Leeds, Leicester, and So'ton.

Roy has gotten a tune out of this squad, even with Wilf out most of the time. To me, it's a no brainer to give Roy a new one year contract. It's the least risky move we can make.

If we don't retain Roy, then we're right back to rolling the dice with some random manager like PV or FdB. Why risk it? What's the reward? To me, it's more likely that whoever we sign would be the same or worse than Roy. Roy's only downside is his age, but he still seems into it, and is clearly a better manager than the much younger PV.

2017 Feb. (Van Aanholt) Palace 1 - 0 Middlesboro
2018 Jan. (Sako) Palace 1 - 0 Burnley
2019 May (Batshuayi, Batshuayi, OG, Van Aanholt, Townsend) Palace 5 - 3 Bournemouth
2020 Feb. (Van Aanholt) Palace 1 - 0 Newcastle

Often most PL seasons at least one of the newly promoted teams gets relegated, this time none of them did, will they suffer from second season syndrome ? well time will tell - I dont think that the 3 promoted teams are going to be weaker, they won the right to be in the PL & will offer a different challenge, Burnley are a different animal from the one we have known previously, Sheffield will be big & physical, who knows what to expect from Luton & of course will one or more of them do a Forest & buy everything with a player registration & a pulse.

Never dull in the PL -