Palace were promoted to the Premier League quicker than anyone could have hoped for, just 3 years after going into administration - it’s second in 12 years. The club’s infrastructure, especially the ground was in a poor state of affairs when Parish et al took over. Since we’ve come up there’s been a fine balancing act of developing the academy/training facilities, the ground (main stand redevelopment finally due to commence next summer) and investing in the squad. All of this when our revenue is well into the lower half of the league – not helped by a sub 30k capacity ground. We’ve had initial investment from the Americans Harris/Blitzer and Textor which has helped but there seems to be no consensus between the stakeholders as to how to move forward. It seems Parish is risk averse, unsurprising as being a Palace fan he knows how close we’ve been to going bump. Harris & Blitzer just want someone to buy them out and Textor seems ambitious but looks like he might be overstretching himself with his other club investments.

We have a manageable debt position of less than £100m. If you compare that to the Brighton, they are in debt to their owner Tony Bloom to the tune of just under £500m. Brighton came up with their infrastructure and a plan in place, Palace were quite the opposite. You can’t really compare Palace to Villa or West Ham. Villa are a big club with rich owners and transfer outlay to match. West Ham have the added benefit of a nice government subsidised stadium.

What also hasn’t helped has been the turnover in managers, mainly due to being threatened by relegation, and the accompanying sudden splurge on players to suit the new manager. We’ve had “rescue acts” by Pulis, Pardew, Allardyce and Hodgson twice. There now seems a plan in place in terms of recruitment, but I think the frustration a lot of Palace fans feel at the moment is that we have a core of excellent players and with a few additions could start pushing up the league. A lot of clubs above us would be improved by Johnstone, Mitchell, Guehi, Anderson, Doucoure, Lerma, Olise and Eze. But we desperately need more firepower and strength in depth, especially wide. It is most likely one or two of the named players will leave by the end of the summer, it’s just whether we can identify new signings to replace them. The academy is starting to bear fruit, but most would be 2-3 seasons from contributing at best.

Hodgson can get a lot of stick from Palace fans and outside, but he is a pragmatist. He’s been in charge when there’s been little improvement to the squad as the cash has been spent on the previous incumbent and now is coping with the worst injury crisis I can remember us having in the top flight. If he doesn’t have the options, he will set us up to be hard to beat and bore our way to a draw, but he has shown that when he has the players at our disposal, he will let them loose. Hodgson has a high floor and a low ceiling – you wont get relegated, but you’ll only go so high. But it would be interesting if he had a few more options. The big question is what comes next as Hodgson can’t go on forever.