{"id":608779,"date":"2026-05-28T16:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T16:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/608779\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T16:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T16:38:09","slug":"crystal-palaces-seesaw-season-ends-in-triumph-but-now-a-new-era-begins-crystal-palace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/608779\/","title":{"rendered":"Crystal Palace\u2019s seesaw season ends in triumph \u2026 but now a new era begins | Crystal Palace"},"content":{"rendered":"

After everything Steve Parish has been through over the past 12 months, he was just about able to compose himself. The man who fell in love with Crystal Palace<\/a> as an 11-year-old schoolboy when they reached the FA Cup semi-final for the first time in 1976 from the old Third Division and stepped in to save his club from administration in 2010 reflected with pride on the journey that has taken them to three trophies under the shrewd management of Oliver Glasner.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredible,\u201d said Parish after Jean-Philippe Mateta\u2019s goal against Rayo Vallecano in Leipzig sealed their triumph in the Conference League<\/a>. \u201cAn amazing achievement. All the ups and downs \u2026 To get to the Europa League, where we deserve to be. It just shows you: sometimes the good guys win. When I bought the club I wasn\u2019t sure we\u2019d ever play in Europe, let alone win a trophy. It\u2019s a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

The irony of the captain, Dean Henderson, being handed the trophy by Aleksander Ceferin \u2013 the Uefa president on whose watch Palace were demoted from the Europa League<\/a> after winning the FA Cup last year \u2013 was not lost on Parish or the thousands of fans who made the trip from south London to Saxony. Last August, Parish described the ruling as \u201cthe biggest injustice in the history of football\u201d and the \u201cFuck Uefa\u201d chant that references John Textor and the Nottingham Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis, has become the soundtrack of Palace\u2019s first European campaign. They can now look forward to taking up their rightful place in the second-tier competition after a topsy-turvy season ended in glory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have got a taste for it now, we want to keep it going,\u201d Parish said. \u201cWe have gone up a level and we have got to try to stay there. We will have a week to celebrate and then work hard in the summer.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Palace are to stay there he must ensure lessons have been learned. Parish\u2019s relationship with Glasner soured at the start of the manager\u2019s first full season after he waited until the last moment to bring in players in the 2024 summer transfer window. Although Glasner guided the club to their first major trophy the following May by beating Manchester City in the Cup final<\/a>, things then deteriorated after Eberechi Eze was sold to Arsenal and Palace did not heed the Austrian\u2019s pleas for more reinforcements as they prepared for Europe. The Marc Gu\u00e9hi saga in August when Glasner threatened to walk out if the England defender was sold to Liverpool brought matters to a head and he informed Palace in October that he would not extend his contract.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Full\u2018Full party mode\u2019: Crystal Palace react to their Conference League triumph \u2013 video<\/p>\n

After Palace were dumped out of the FA Cup by Macclesfield<\/a>, the situation exploded again in January after Gu\u00e9hi joined Manchester City and Glasner made public his decision to leave this summer, much to the surprise of the hierarchy. A summit over dinner at the Ham Yard restaurant around the corner from Parish\u2019s office in Soho appeared to have smoothed things over, only for Glasner to accuse the club of abandoning his team<\/a> after defeat by Sunderland the following day.<\/p>\n

It is understood that Palace considered putting the assistant manager Paddy McCarthy in temporary charge but Parish resisted the temptation and sanctioned the club-record signings of Brennan Johnson and J\u00f8rgen Strand Larsen \u2013 neither of whom started in Leipzig. That was far too late for Glasner to reconsider his future but he and Parish managed to put aside their differences for the common cause.<\/p>\n

Now a new era begins for Palace without Glasner, , who celebrated Wednesday\u2019s victory with the pitch dive first seen when his Eintracht Frankfurt side beat Barcelona at the Camp Nou in 2022. Parish is expecting a response from Andoni Iraola in the next couple of days after offering the outgoing Bournemouth manager a lucrative deal, and has Coventry\u2019s Frank Lampard and Pierre Sage, who led Lens to second in Ligue 1 this season, among the alternatives.<\/p>\n

Whoever is appointed will face a challenge keeping together a team that has made history, with Maxence Lacroix, Daniel Mu\u00f1oz, Adam Wharton \u2013 man of the match against Rayo with a swaggering performance despite not being 100% fit \u2013 and Isma\u00efla Sarr, the Conference League\u2019s top scorer, expected to be coveted by bigger clubs.<\/p>\n

Conference League final man of the match, Adam Wharton (right), is expected to attract interest from bigger clubs. Photograph: Lisi Niesner\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Replacing any of those players and expanding the squad to make sure it can properly cope with the demands of the Europa League will not be easy. Reports last week said that Bovis, the company contracted to build the new main stand at Selhurst Park first proposed in September 2016, is no longer working on the project and the repeated delays have not helped Parish\u2019s plans to progress.<\/p>\n

Woody Johnson bought Textor\u2019s 43% stake last year after the Uefa ruling and the billionaire owner of the NFL\u2019s New York Jets is understood to have helped fund the purchases of Stand Larsen and Johnson. His backing will be crucial if Parish, who is among the Premier League\u2019s best-paid executives, is to build on the firm foundations left by Glasner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After everything Steve Parish has been through over the past 12 months, he was just about able to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-608779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}