Crystal Palace are set to appoint Oliver Glasner as their next manager, according to multiple reports.
The Eagles have endured a tough season, having picked up just six wins all term, with a heavy defeat against rivals Brighton & Hove Albion coming soon after fans unfurled a banner away to Arsenal asking for change from the ownership.
Roy Hodgson's second stint as boss is coming to an end, with the future looking like former Eintracht Frankfurt and Wolfsburg manager, Glasner.
Who is incoming Crystal Palace manager, Oliver Glasner? FourFourTwo's German football expert Ed McCambridge explains…
Aside from an underwhelming loan spell at LASK 20 seasons ago, Oliver Glasner spent the entirety of his career at SV Ried in Austria, becoming their manager in 2014. He spent a season there before heading back to LASK on unfinished business.
There, Glasner was impressive for four seasons, getting the club into Europe twice in a row and earning a big move to the Bundesliga – where now-Liverpool chief Jorg Schmadtke hired him. Glasner rapidly built a reputation for himself in German football as an extremely capable coach, leading Wolfsburg to fourth place and Champions League qualification in only his second season with the club.
Rather than stick around, the Austrian opted to jump ship to Eintracht Frankfurt – a bigger club with a far larger fanbase – ahead of the 2021/22 season and swiftly led them to Europa League success, the club's first continental trophy for more than 40 years. It was telling, also, that Wolfsburg fell off a cliff after his departure.
His hardworking side looked to be scaling new heights the following year. They were second in the table on January 1, 2023, and through to the Champions League last-16. But a 10-game winless run in the Bundesliga saw him ‘sacked’ in May (though he would stay in his job until the end of the campaign). It was a sad end, given Glasner's trajectory until that stage – he'd even been linked with the Borussia Dortmund job prior to that downturn in results.
His biggest critics pointed towards a lack of fresh ideas. Glasner didn't look capable of the tactical nous or leadership skills to reverse things when the wheels started coming off. But it is still felt that had he been given more time, he could have got Eintracht back to winning ways.
Glasner is tactically flexible, having favoured a 4-2-3-1 system at Wolfsburg before switching to a 3-4-2-1 at Eintracht Frankfurt. It's likely, therefore, that he'll want to spend some time with Crystal Palace on the training ground, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of his players, before settling on a formation.
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