Crystal Palace manager Oliver Glasner has confirmed he will leave the club this summer at the end of his contract. The Austrian’s announcement comes as Manchester City are in the process of finalising an agreement with Palace to sign centre-back Marc Guehi in a package worth £20million ($26.8m) plus bonuses and a sell-on clause.
Palace are without a win in nine matches across all
competitions, and exited the FA Cup third round to Macclesfield of the National
League North on Saturday, but Glasner insisted the timing of his future
announcement is coincidental.
Palace are currently 13th in the Premier League after 21
rounds of action, and are in the play-off stages of the Conference League,
where they play Bosnian side Zrinjski, ahead of the knockout stage. They were
unfairly deprived of what should have been a Europa League place by Uefa technicalities.
It had seemed clear for some time that the direction of
travel was for Glasner to depart at the end of his contract and Guehi would be
gone then too. There was some surprise
at the club that this was the day he chose to break the news publicly, but an
appreciation too that there was nothing more they could have done to convince
him that his future was best served at Palace.
Speculation has suggested that there might be Manchester
United interest in Glasner. He has also
been linked with Bayern Munich in the past.
It is a setback but Glasner is the most successful manager in their history and still has the chance to achieve even greater things. I was a bit surprised that Radio 5 this afternoon referred to him sas 'Olly' as he seemed a bit more formal to me.
Whether this clarity will help their season is up for
discussion. He is sincere in his belief that it will, but there can be no
question that it also risks having a destabilising effect and ruining the final
months of the campaign.
More generally, it illustrates the challenges that an
insurgent club can face in breaking into the big six oligopoly. Top clubs swoop for their best players.
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