I think there is a fourth option, and it's actually the one we're following. Basically, it's your option one (above) but, because we have limited funds, it's being enacted over three years rather than all at once. PV is getting the players that fit his style, but it's taking far more time than we'd ideally want to bring them in.

If we were Chelsea, Olise, Eze, Richards, Ahamada, Gallagher, Edouard, Mateta, Lokonga, Andersen, and Guehi would have all arrived in a single window, and if not that then in two windows. I think we're doing exactly what they'd do, but it's taking us three years rather than one to do it.

In some ways it's the right approach. Ideally, we wouldn't be underfunded and we wouldn't even need to discuss this but as long as we are, staying the course with the manager and taking a measured, long-term view of squad building - frustrating as it may be in the interim - is probably the best way forward. We'll know, to a point, in a few weeks time. If Ahamada and Lokonga impress and we start to look like a considerably better side over the next month, then it'll be easier to feel good about the jigsaw puzzle being assembled in this way.

And the complacency re relegation goes on and on.

I actually looked at the fixtures earlier and thought to myself that the next 4 games were a decent run for picking up points.

What cannot be contested is that while Allison never reaped the fruit, he did plant the tree. He changed our style and led the transition to and initial success of what was then the best youth setup in the country. The reinvention of Palace occurred under his watch. Yes, he didn't get us over the hump; it was Terry Venables who did that (and reaped the dividends) but without Allison doing the legwork and rebuilding our entire philosophy, there's a strong argument that the Team of the Eighties would never have happened.

All this leads to a valid question. If Vieira is, as you suggest, possibly a latterday Malcolm Allison and we moved on from him at the end of this season but, in two years' time we found ourselves in Europe, how much more fondly would PV's critics today look back on his time as our manager? And equally, if we had stuck with Big Mal for another twelve months, would we have won the promotion that Venables led us to anyway? Just food for thought.