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Catch us each week until the end of the season as we bring you race previews, recaps and an in-depth look at all the contending drugs and teams. Tune in to the Late Breaking F1 Podcast now, wherever you get your podcasts. It's time to get your checking account to zero with free checking from PenFed. That's zero ATM fees, zero balance requirements and zero time spent waiting for your paycheck to direct a deposit, because you can receive it up to two days early. Open your account with just $25 and see how big zero can be. Apply online today at penfed.org/freechecking. Early direct deposit eligibility may vary between pay periods and timing of payers funding to receive any advertised product you must become a member of PenFed, insured by NCUA. Hello and welcome to the five-year plan podcast. We have a special pod here today. It's a really posh one. We're going to call that the posh spot. Speak yourself. We've got Andy, who's pretty posh. I've got played a role of Kevin Day and James Endicott and James Daly today, so I'm going to be both a bit surreal. I'm going to winge about stuff generally and talk about the 70s and players in the 70s. And then do a silly song at the end. Wonderful. We also have Ed Malian. The loose posh of the four. Hello. Hello. And we also have Mike Wicks. Hello. So we're here now to discuss the Norwich game. But also sponsors. Oh yeah, this is true. Yes. So we're sponsored by JCIS. That's JC Innovation and Strategy. The Global Research and Brand Consultancy from South London. Visit JC-IS.com. And Vector Printing. That's www.vector.co.uk. And that's Vector Wheeler. Okay. That was great. Right. Straight to the action. The game against Norwich. That was a pretty good way to start the season, wasn't it? All right. Three points. Away from home. Nearly promoted to size. Job done. Don't know where everyone's moaning. So I'm even taking media training from football. It's going to be very much like a face matching to you. I just think people have been slightly overly concerned about performance. And what essentially is, it's going to be a level performance. It's not going to be that much better than pre-season. Particularly short pre-season. And it was one of our increasing amount of games that you think we should get three points to them. But obviously that's, again, a media training place. There are no easy games in the Premier League because I'm delighted with three points. I think we're just better away from home. I think the Norwich fans are fuming about the referee. They're fuming about them having a lot more of the ball. They're fuming about them having more chances. I just think we're about to be fuming if I came from Norwich too though. Yeah, well, you know, that's what life gives you, isn't it? Do you think that some of the criticism towards the referee is justified? So I watched down the category again. Another referee coming out and saying, Mark Halsey said that they thought the goal should have been this allowed. The goal being this allowed is one I don't have a problem with. Because his head, Joel Ward's head is in the mix there. And there's a ludicrously high foot because he's doing it like that. It's a great goal, well taken goal, but I wish he'd done that more for us. I think it's still a dangerous situation. Obviously Norwich fans don't agree. I think there was a penalty that they could have had, but, you know, that happens most weeks with most teams. I mean, it seems to be one of those, pardon you, you can say it himself off. The game seems to be one of those cheapy clichés where anywhere else on the pitch is a free kick. Well, if it's a free kick anywhere else on the pitch, then it's exactly the same offense when you get into the box. Admittedly, you're annoyed if you see your player do something spectacular and it is on the face of a foul and offense that should sort of result in a free kick. But I think they had, there were other instances in which the ref was getting things more visibly wrong than that particular instance. There was the penalty shot for them towards the end which looked more clear cut to me than any shot they might have had for it, not being there and just play with the high boot. And I did think he was a genuinely very, very poor ref. I understand that his last game, any shot he has for the pregame, I think so, yeah. Hooper, I believe his name is. And I think his last game before that was the lead to playoff final. And the pace of football at the Premier League is just so much faster than even in the championship that he needs someone who's able to make right decisions very, very quickly. Even very good experience refs get it wrong. So for someone to sort of be thrown into that sort of environment, he didn't really do too well. So we complain about refs get, you know, I'm in the championship, I remember, particularly refs get demoted from the Premier League about performances and they go into the championship and they're in the championship and everyone in the championship is complaining because why do we get the ship refs basically? This guy's worked his way up through the lower leagues and was well considered in the lower leagues. I saw before the games actually happened that we came, Keith Hackett had said, and this guy is his first Premier League game. Palace and Norwich are going to feel like their guinea pigs almost. Well, you've got to have a first Premier League game at some point. Everyone, Howard Webb has to have a first Premier League game at some point. Yeah, the guy didn't have a great game. Doesn't mean he's not going to go out to be a good ref in the future. I think the problem is there's always referee decisions to complain about. Norwich will feel really aggrieved. It was a big day for them. It was sunny. It was the first out of the season, the back of the Premier League. It's a game they would have felt they could have won. But I think Palace are really good away from home. I think on the counter attack, brilliant, I think, all season. We're going to defy the odds away from home. And we might, if anything, disappoint at Salas Park, which was kind of a trendy sore towards the end of Pargeau's kind of first half season in charge. I think one of the players that probably got a little bit more criticism than others for Palace was Alex McCarthy. Now, from a personal perspective, I think that he actually had quite a good first half. He then came into this situation where, to me, it looked like there was a deflection on the shot from Redmond, even the slightest, enough to make the trajectory of the ball go slightly differently. And after that, I think that spooked him. And I think that ended up playing on his mind and it kept. And as a result, his goal-kicking was to be fair, inconsistent. Do you think it's right that he's got that criticism? Because I think that was one thing you might have been hinting at, that looking at the performance, maybe McCarthy was someone who was picked out a little bit for extra attention. Yeah, I thought he had a decent debut, not a brilliant debut, but nothing to be worried about at all. I read somewhere, I can't remember where someone making the point that Nigel Martin had a few dodgy games when he first signed him. And again, much like Ed's point about the ref, he's got to make his first Premier League debut for us at some point. And to come away with three points, relatively unscathed, I think it will stand him in good stead. I don't think the goal was, I put as much blame on the midfield from not closing down the shot as quickly, given where we were in the game and given how close Redmond was to the goal, then I would to McCarthy. The goal kicks, at least he kicks a kick some further than Spironi. But rather they go out of play than to an opposition player's head on the halfway line. It's not like any of them in the second half at least put us under any pressure. And otherwise he looked fairly alright. Conversely, the double save, which he seemed to get a lot of praise for, I felt both shots were relatively straight at him, albeit he had to have strong hands and fairly good reactions. All in all, I don't think he was amazing. I don't think he was a disaster by any stretch and I'd be very surprised if he's not in goal on Sunday against Arsenal. But I think I found it absolutely unbelievable. You would have thought Palace fans more than anyone would know not to write a goalkeeper at one or two games. You know, we've just been to Julian Spironi's testimony on it. It's probably something that has been repeated since that game by others. But the fact that he was written off quite so quickly and that obviously impinges upon his confidence massively, you would have thought they're probably there with that guy. Maybe Alex McCarthy is actually going to go on to be a really good goalkeeper, but has had a really difficult start in some ways. I didn't think it was particularly bad performance. It didn't make any absolute cleaners. It was just the fact that we were starting to come under more and more pressure from a Norwich side, who I thought were actually pretty good to be honest. Off the ball, I thought they retained possession pretty well. I think the thing that separated the two sides was the fact that they didn't have the sort of incisiveness or creativity in the final third that we clearly had. We looked like we could maybe on another day go up again. I'm not sure at the moment with the personal they got that they can. But there wasn't anything that McCarthy did going back to that point that was specifically wrong. Do you think knocking out a play when the game started to turn a little bit away from us? Do you think that maybe the thing that people are frustrated at is that McCarthy isn't Wayne Hennessy and that there's been this kind of... He's better than Wayne Hennessy. I think he's a better goalkeeper. From what I've seen in both, I've seen more of McCarthy than Hennessy. In truth. But McCarthy and I know someone who played with McCarthy at Reading, and he said he's an absolute top chalky, but they were clubs up big clubs who were looking at him as a second choice. People had a little pool looking at him as a second choice. I think Paris had brought him in as a kind of one and a half. Kind of a sprone. It's going to be number one, but for how much longer? McCarthy is a much better heir to have than Hennessy for me. I think there are other concerns over Hennessy. It's very likely for me that he won't be at the club at the end of the transfer window. He wants to play for Wales at Euro 2016 next summer. He wants to be playing first in football. You could do that in a championship. He probably won't do that with any Premier League club. So, you know, Hennessy for some reason has been... Well, under the Pudis reign, I know it definitely was kind of knocking on the door. Under Paju, I think it's going to mean McCarthy is number two, and potentially in the future, number one, Hennessy out the door. Yeah. When did this happen amongst parlose fans like it, though, that Hennessy became elevated to such a level of regard? It's almost like the Matt Parsons sitting directly the longer you're out of the team. The better you are regarded as an option. I'm going to be saying this before about Joel Ward, when Joel Ward was injured for a long time, and people have built him up to be, you know, "I can't wait till Joel Ward comes back." It says that actually when he came back, he was bloody good. But it's a solid thing. I remember when Roy Swiggins was younger and people were like, "Oh, when he comes back, he can replace Granville, whatever." It's like, "Well, no, he's not good at it." But this is what happens. The fact that he's not on the team means that you can't prove it wrong in many ways, but they see him all the time. And the country's softer than the side of Hennessy. He's not really the one for them. I think one of the lessons we learned from the game against Norwich was also that our wing players is still one of the key ways for us to unlock sides. Now, Wilfred Zaha has performance. Do you think that if he carries on with that kind of form that he should, you know, that maybe, just maybe, he might actually impress people on the international stage, that he could actually, just from that game against Norwich for me, I know he was only playing against Norwich, but for me, that kind of performance is the kind that ultimately led to him getting an international call up when he was at Palace in the Championship. So do we think that that's a possibility that he should really, you know, be given that incentive to try and push on and see how that goes? Yeah, absolutely. Wilfred has all the ability in the world. I've never seen a player do things that he can do in world football. Now, that doesn't translate to... That's a big claim. There are some things he's done in the football which I've never seen professional players do at the top level. That's not to say that he will be one of the best players in the world. There are many other aspects that he needs to add to his game. The great news for us is that he seems to be adding that maturity, the weight of pass, the temperament. There was a moment when Bradley Johnson clattered him. Brad Johnson, who by the way, was, I didn't realise quite what a horrible player he was. And he looks like a hipster. Yeah, I'm not a fan of that. And yeah, Wilfred dealt with that manfully when in other games of last season, even under Pargy, he had gone back into a shell. He carried on and the consistency. He demonstrated in terms of knowing when to use his tricks and his consistency was phenomenal. If he carries on like that. Do we think there's an issue here with international recognition that pilots, players, generally? Because I don't want to get into this as far as... No, no, no. Do you not think the last season that Scott Damned deserved, at least, the call up, the punching, who is one of the most productive, when you look at his numbers? I think Scott Damned has got that. I think Scott Damned could have been in the mix, I think. Every single fan of every single club thinks their players are underappreciated by everyone else. Well, about Joel Ward, he should be in the mix. There was a period when Joel Ward was outstanding and should have been in the England reckoning. Not necessarily in the England team. Perhaps, you know, on the fringe of a squad, he might have been the 24th or 25th player when they're calling up 23. We don't know. I think Dan is probably in that ballpark right now. But if Nathan Redman got caught up for playing well for six months, kind of the fans would criticise. If Scott Damned would call up for playing well for six months, other fans are going to criticise. I think you can't go down that path too much. I think Jason Punchham will never play for him. I love him. I think he's been brilliant for us. He's a key player for us. As you can see by him starting ahead of Palasi, for example. Richard thinks it's going to happen more regularly, but he goes with Punch on one side and one of the quick winners on the other, and then brings another on with 30 minutes to go, which of course that chaos he talks about. Punchham's brilliant, but he will never play for him. Despite being one of the best fantasy players you can have, it's like being one of the best set-piece deliveries in the league. I think it's just not going to happen. On the subject of Blassie, when he did come on, he looked pretty, he didn't look fit. You could tell, he just wasn't sharp. Where's talking about that, wasn't it? He just wasn't sharp. Do you think that it's likely that he'll end up moving? It doesn't sound like it just from what Palace is saying, but it just depends on the bid, I guess. The guy only wants to go to the top six club. Right. I don't think the top six clubs are going to pay what we want from. That's as far as it goes, I mean. He likes to pager a lot. He tells lots of people that he likes to pager a lot. But equally, he feels like he's a top six club, like a top moral Liverpool, which is the sort of clubs that weren't making contact with him, discreetly, when he was in a really good run of form in March and April. If a club like that came in, I think he'd obviously be keen to go, because he can see playing in Europe and what that could do for him and stuff like that. He's come to the game quite late in terms of his work as well out through the league, so he's what, 26, 27 now? So, you know, if you've got a big move, that's a sort of like life confirming financial situation. Not that he's doing badly now, but, you know, it would be the sort of thing that would swing him and his family for life, which is obviously his first priority. However, that said, I think, at the moment, there's a very long chance of going, because you'd need a really desperate club to come in with a big, big bid. And you've now got that sort of equalised, in effect, on the outside of that top six, what's the point of moving to go to a villa or a West Ham? He's not stuck with one of the, you know, a stuck who've been big on wingers, trying to give wingers in this, so they're going to get Shaquiri or such today, which is a great sign in, actually, better value than Balassie. And a better player than Balassie. But... You're going to get trolled for that one. No, well, everyone knows that. That's actually a fact. But if you look at kind of what Stokar, they're a really settled club and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, it wasn't interesting. Just missed it out of hand. And I think that's a good sign if he sees that the only clubs above Palace are that top six. Now, I think that's a kind of how some of the other players are doing it. You're in Dubai, it was drawing on top eight, on each side. You're looking at the whisper within the club is that we've got to be looking top eight now. And you keep making those marginal gains and you keep pushing on and see where you get. I think just to kind of round off this segment, we're going to talk about Yajan Kebai, Conor Wickham and perhaps Sware, who I think after the performance on Saturday, he looked a bit like a new signing entirely. I mean, obviously he hasn't played many games before that. But I thought he looked quite accomplished in terms of an attacking player, maybe not so much defensive. What did you think, Mike? Yeah, he obviously linked that really well with Wolf once they swapped. And there was a glorious bit of skill from Wolf in the first half where the icing on the cake was how he managed to play in Sware so precisely. And that was great to watch. So my vantage point of carrot wasn't brilliant. But they clearly got in behind us on our left hand side a few times in the first half. Hard to know whether that was Sware, punch, combination of the two or the general set up for the team. Or Norwich's incisive wing blade. The one highlight that made it to match the day I think was the grab-in chance was actually a brilliant move that would cut a pretty decent team open. But I think if he carries the sort of offensive threat that he has been doing throughout pre-season and on Saturday, then you can kind of offset that a little bit. Well, the pins team back with that sort of play that he showed on Saturday. He didn't even have to show a brilliant defensive position half the time because I was so worried about him going on the overlap that they were probably dropping a bit deeper in wide errors. Otherwise would do, and certainly they would do if we were playing, for example, Martin Kenny there who would be getting a nose beat if he was trying to go up as far as perhaps Sware does and trying to do rainbow flicks over people's head. What an outrage bit of skill that was. Yeah, what an outrage bit of skill. He's the sort of fallback that fans love to watch but I'm sure would give managers slight palpitations at times. Particularly a manager like Alan Pardier who's in charge of a team that links quite a few columns a lot of season at times. Sorry, when he signed for, I know a guy who used to scout in France and asked him, and his exact words on Sware were a lot defending. Very aggressive, needs to stop needing people in the back on aerial challenges. Great stamina energy, patchy crossing, occasionally ripped naught, occasionally terrible. It's kind of what we've seen from him so far, it does sound very much like it. I think Alan Pardier put him straight in when we signed him in January and it was a bit much. But from what you said to other people, that's what happened with the Bouchy as well when he first signed him. Getting up to speed with the Premier League is difficult. He played on and off through that six-month period last season. I think now he's ready, he's fully integrated into the team, he's got some good friends there now. He's playing well, he's got a good understanding with people like Zaha and stuff. The link up down at the line I thought looked quite good the other night and looked good at one of the preseason friendlies as well. So I think it's good to have the left-back situation sorted knowing that Joel Ward can play back up there if we need to. And I think occasionally he's just going to pull something out of the bag for us this season. It might be like a 40-yard stunner, it might be just a brilliant cross that someone had in the far post. You just feel like there is enough there within to persist. Someone else who watched a lot of French football, the only thing he had to say about Suarez was really good in the air, really dangerous from corners and set pieces, which for the first six months and to look at his size, you saw absolutely no evidence of until, well, full of them I suppose, and then clearly on Saturday. Which was either an awful header or a brilliant pass. It's interesting because just looking from his head direction, it looks like he's actually looking at Delaney, but maybe we're giving him a bit too much. Incredible. Headed through ball in that case. I thought just moving on. I thought it was interesting with Pardu that he said in the press conference after the game, that with Kebai, he's not quite got that edge just yet. He hasn't played interestingly on the, you know, when you compare Suarez to Kebai, Kebai spent a year in Paris and didn't really play as many games as he should have done in a league that probably isn't as intense as the English league is, as the Premier League is. So it was interesting that he said that he feels that within five or six games, we'll see the Kebai that he knows from Newcastle. I think on the subject of Norwich's goal, Kebai was the player closest to Redmond and was probably a bit too slow to close him down. But in terms of his actual presence, I thought he was excellent. What do you think, Andy? Well, I think it's a quite terrifying prospect if that was Kebai nowhere near his best. I still thought it was fantastic, particularly in the closing stages. Just the awareness on him, like the ability to turn inside a man, find an easy pass out wide, just really, really intelligent football. You can see that in everything he does, like the through ball for Jordan March in the first half. The movement to find himself some space lay on for the goal and the smart finish. The sort of player that I love to watch I think is his pass completion rate was over 90% for the day, which considering we're under pressure for a reasonable amount of... British doesn't matter because it's a completely irrelevant start. People love it, so... They like it when it is nice and when it's a bad one. It's a odd one, doesn't actually mean anything because it could be a jet neck as well. Yeah, it's a nonsense and Andy should be ashamed of himself. For that reason I'll throw it in too many reasons. OK, I'm sure so everything else. The thing we've combined is he's going to be nowhere near his best yet, because he needs to get to know the players he's playing with and kind of learn what runs are going to be making and stuff. He's going to be ludicrous for us. Right, finally, kind of Wickham. Only came on for five, ten minutes and played a part in the third goal. Massive part in the third goal, it wasn't again from my vantage point. I saw throw-in a couple of run-blue shirts and then suddenly you talk about making the run. When I watched it back, that was basically all Wickham's doing. He was looking for the one too, actually, wasn't he? Yeah, with MacArthur. Which attracted the defender away, which gave goodbye a bit more space. My dad and I were, we had a sort of a running tally of all his contributions given. He was only on the pitch for ten minutes. We had a bit of focus on him. The first thing he did, I think, was win a flick-on from header right to Balassie's feet. Then he won a challenge. Then the only negative thing he did was have a shot, which he screwed wide, albeit it wasn't terrible, and then he made the goal. It was also interesting that he slowed the game down a little bit at that point, because Norwich were pushing, weren't they? There was a lot of, you know, that the risk of incurring the wrath of the past completion to that. He completed more passes than Murray did at total. He completed ten passes to Murray's eight, clearly in nine minutes. So perhaps the brief was, keep possession, don't do anything stupid, don't take any risks, and it worked, and he's massive. I think he's a physical beast, absolutely, you know, that's kind of a huge part of his game, especially getting older. If you think about targeting men like Murray and Ricky Lambert and Grant Holt, all kinds of guys who've come up through the leagues and stuff like that, they developed late, they mature late. Connor Wickham's 22, so his best year is definitely ahead of him. I don't have a problem with past completion stats for a strike, because they're in dangerous areas. Like, you know, your own goodbye can play passes back to Damian Delaney and Scott Dan, and it's not a problem. Connor Wickham linking up well and getting decent stats up there is far more impressive. I think he's going to be more of a link up man than perhaps your score goals this season. But as long as everyone's around him to score goals, then there's not too many problems there. I think it's interesting, Adam Podge, who seems to be really high on Jordan much. Like, you know... That was another highlight, actually. To me, for me personally, I thought he was really... I thought he'd provided almost a second striker option quite nicely for Murray. Murray seemed to leave up well with him. Podge, you specifically wanted him, and it's obvious that you wanted him at number 10 slot as well. I think he's very keen on him there, and he's young as well. We're going to see him a lot more of him. I remember when he was at Birmingham, wasn't he? And he was, for me, like the best midfielder in the championship that season with Birmingham. And if we're going to see him playing that role behind the striker, he's not a guy who's kind of like a traditional number 10. In many ways, he's a guy who's going to get up and down. He's going to be making tackles, going to be quite an action sort of player. And he's going to probably arrive late and score goals, hopefully. So, I think, where can probably the guy you want up top linking things up? I think Bamford's an option as a natural finisher. You've got Murray, hopefully, if he is staying at the club, who can do a lot. Dwight Gals, quick, if he stays. I think you've got much punches are, but that's the arriving. There's enough there to be confident about. More than enough, I really, really like much. And I've realised I've probably got about five Palace midfielders now who I think have to start in about three midfield positions clearly here. Not sure enough. Well, we've sacrificed a keeper in a flick out the house. We've actually given it to the FAI pass against us now. We're really in our melee. All we offer is our pass against Palace, I've seen that. Yeah, Joel Ellie didn't even make the bench, who I think has been a really, really important player for us and criminally underrated. Do you think he tied off in a last season? A little bit. Ledley, perhaps, yeah, he was... He's brilliant on the period, for sure. He backed his best when parties took over, and we didn't have any... We didn't have melee, and it was just him and MacArthur. And then I saw the Fulham game, he came on for Jedi, and just helped us keep the war a bit better than Jedi had in the first half, albeit in a preseason game. But just finally and much. Again, half of the hills of me telling you that as I was the best player, the world has ever seen, he reminds me a little bit of Michael Balak, purely in the sense that he's an attacking midfielder who's also really strong and powerful, he's going to add aerial presence, not knocked off the ball easily, technically very good, later runs into the box, so I think we've got a player there. So in conclusion, lots of positives then. We've got some questions coming up in the second half of this podcast. Join us then. Hi and welcome back to the Five Year Plan podcast. Hey! This is part two of Three Parts, and it's brought to you by JCIS. That's JC Innovation and Strategy, the Global Research Brand, and Brand Consultancy from South London. Visit JC-IS.com, and... They run with some big brands there. They do. Yeah, yeah. They do see a couple of them. Vector printing as well, which is www.vector.co.uk, and that's Vector with us. Yay! I feel like I should now go on a five-minute monologue about Vector, because in Kevin's honour, who's up in Edinburgh as well. So good luck to Kevin up there. And JD. So good luck to JD, I think. JD is out-fliring in a tide of ones that you, which is about the most terrifying thing I've ever seen. But good luck to them both up there. Yes. Yes indeed. So we're back with some questions. So we've had a load of questions. I think a win for Palace probably made people a little bit more... ...interested in asking questions. I think the first one that we should probably start with, the first one we should probably start with is... How much better do you think Palace can realistically get? I saw someone at ludicrously sound. Well, my Palace was sneaking into the top six this season, which was about the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. I think getting to the same level of the last season would be a fantastic achievement, really. Staying in the league is the important thing, first and foremost. I know it's a cliché that everyone says over and over again, but it's completely true. I think we should be able to, hopefully, with the squad we're now starting to assemble... ...and the type of football we play and the sort of physicality we've got. We should be able to consolidate around the position we finished last season, you'd hope. And I think that'd be pretty successful season if we repeat that again. Well, there's not much between eight and twelve-thirteen, I think. There's actually not much between the entire bottom ten, but... As long as you can stay away from that relegation battle, that's the first thing... ...in the two seasons we've been up, we've always been at some point there and there are battles. We had to come on good runs after the Christmas break to stay out. If we don't flirt with relegation in the entire season, for me it's been a success. Even if you finish twelve-thirteen, I think the difference between twelve and thirteen-thousand-thirteen and eighth-night they say is pretty negligible. It's been a stated aim to have a cup run. I think most people will be happy that mid-table and a cup run. You could try and really go for that top six, top eight. I'm not sure if we've quite got the depth yet to really go for that. There's some clubs like Southampton and Stoker, stuff who have got probably much stronger squads than us over the whole season. I would love to see us with a cup to accept that. I was even a little bit at this point, if I'm honest, that we didn't win the Cape Town Cup. I know that's a really ridiculous... I got into that and I was just like, we're definitely going to win this. Sporting Club de Palque de Palque to give them the proper name because I know they get pedantic about that. I was like, we should be able to beat them. Obviously they're a good side and it's one of those matches where we didn't play brilliantly. But I was upset at that. The FA Cup will be a nice consolation to that. The dream is surely, I don't know if it's the name of everyone else. My dream has been to see Palace in Europe, Ajax away. Then... Ajax Cape Town. I've even got like a fantasy Europa League group. I'd want Ajax in there. Nice answer, more hatred. Then Sparta Prague will wear. That'd be quite fun. And then probably a beachy one, maybe Balenci, maybe Napoli, somewhere down. It's a gum clinic to clear their schedule. I think it would be good to... All the legendary away days you've had it, he always burned like Watford and Stockport, whatever. Imagine that but translated to Prague. It would just be insane. That's the one thing I want. And also obviously the CS winner Cup would be great. Even if it's the milk cup where it was called. Thanks for that question. That was from Richard Agis, or AGIUS. I think that's Agis, isn't it? The AG one. Ag Euse, maybe. Next question is... Let's have a look here. Who's it from? Mark Dallimore. Hi, Mark. Mark, how do we set up against Arsenal, presuming they dominate possession? Is it better that they include Genak alongside MacArthur? Well, Norwich dominated possession. So, that looked that all right. Yeah, and Arsenal dominated possession against West Ham. I would have picked Ledley to start into Norwich. So, personally, I would, by the same logic. Would you play Jake there? No, I'd play one of the two. And I was as big a Mille fan as I am. It was a nine-crashier than a little 19-year-old crossover. Those pod listeners won't be able to see my horrendous attempt to try and grow a Ledley beard. Was that what that is? Yeah. All right, you had something smilling in there. Yeah, I'd set up with a... I'd probably drop much for Ledley and finish almost as we were at the end of... at the end of Saturday, but Ledley replacing Genak in that in that instance. Well, even on Saturday, it was a big hole at the base of the midfield for a good sort of half an hour before March that I'd dropped in a little bit deeper. I'd rather even admit that you got it a little bit wrong. I think you'd be getting it horrendously wrong if you were on that same approach against Arsenal, just because they're good if you're not keeping compact and disciplined enough at finding the space between the lines and operating in those nice little triangles that they like pinging around. So, I'd personally, just because I'd like to be obstinate like that, I'd clear Genak in Ledley. Just keep the shit out of there. They're not going to be complacent, which is... when a team like I consistency want them to be a little bit complacent, you wish they'd beat West Ham for one year when they were not really ready for it and we could have just got right up. That's not going to happen. They're going to be absolutely chomping for a win. For me, I think the change you make is you bring in Genak for much. You talk about midfield triangles, so instead of having the two behind one, you have the one behind two, Genak behind. Kebai and Akar for this game, you've got to have the destroyer in there because otherwise they're going to run a mock in that. It was large between me drawing, aiming, delaying me out and just becoming. That then leaves the only question, I think, is who you're going to start that front three because do you go all out pace on the wings? In that case, what punch obviously gets left out? And who do you go up front? If you're going to reach on a counter or do you need a physical presence up there? Kalyanik, in the middle? Exactly what I was going to say. I play punch and Zara on the wings. I play Yannik through the middle, like we did against Sunderland. I think the joy he had against O'Shea and other flat foot defenders through the centre. Imagine if you do that to permanent a sack. I think that's an interesting proposition. Obviously, the past goes with that, I think. It is a debate, a lot of things. You prefer to have someone physical, but for me, that's probably the best way to go. Yep, I would say so too. I think the question may be about with Ledley is that if he doesn't even make the bench against Norwich, do we really see it being a realistic idea in the way? In that case, given that I'd have one of the two, I'd obviously pick Jedi. Could we even see him being an outsider to turn up actually being sold? Yeah, if you were to sell one... Who would it be? Who would it be? It'd be a tussle for the first, or second, whatever day it is this year. Which one do you sell? Mila's older and probably worth more on the sort of international market. So, by that logic, and given that I love Joe Ledley. You really do have a crush there. I didn't realise it was that far. It's not the spot, is it? No, no. On the subject of transfer, that was a really good question, by the way. Before we go on to the next question, can I just say hi to Russell Parker? He's on Namibian, just none. He came to the line of the pub with his son, Jack. He travelled all the way from Namibia to watch Palace Norwich. And apparently the big fan of the pubs. It's just one of us, we're Jack. Yeah, really good. On the subject of transfers, Mike, Ben's and Ben Allen, they both ask... Hi, Mike and Ben. Do we need another centre-back? Are we likely to go in for another centre-back? Well, you would have thought so, wouldn't you? I mean, it was the area that we all identified in the summer. So, yeah, we probably need another centre-back. Handlamp had that great game against Swansea at the end of the season. And he was back in his day and on it's still his good day. Pretty damn good. Set and a half. Delaney, you never quite know what you're going to get with Damian. I love the guy. And he's your typical sort of Palace player in some ways. And he's still his team to echo the Palace, still in terms of the recovery and all that sort of stuff. But you do kind of wonder whether he's got a limited shelf life. I think he's been slightly unfairly written off by some people. But even then, there's no sort of natural sort of replacement for Ben if he goes, for example, if he gets injured sorry or... Kelly? He's still incredibly inexperienced in that position. I think everyone's talking about him being this guy that will eventually go and become a brilliant centre-back. And he has gone to an England tournament as you told us at the last pods in that position. But he's still not played a huge amount of Premier League games in that position. And I've found it surprising that we've not chased centre-backs hard. I know there's still chat about the Hanley thing. And there was the chat about the college uni thing, who we definitely were interested in and definitely weren't interested in. There was a suspiciously worded statement that was definitely not written by lawyers in any way, shape or form. You'd expect us to sign some sort of centre-back. I've not seen a lot of Hanley, so I don't really know how good he is. Maybe other people could. No, Jo, interesting that the common theme is that he obviously wants a centre-back that has been playing in the English leagues. He's not clearly not interested in looking outside England. West Ham, I was really impressed with Bonner against Arsenal. I thought it would be really good. Obviously, he's been playing for Juventus and Italy. There are good players out there. Good bargains out there. But obviously this seems a position that pass doesn't want to compromise. He just wants to compromise. He wants some of us playing in the English leagues. Even if that's dipping down to the championship, getting someone like James Chester or Ryan Hanley. Obviously, chess are not happening, but you know what I mean. It seems even Conochini is someone who's been playing in the English leagues for that long and we're definitely not interested as the statement said. Yeah, never were. No, no. So I think that tells us a story that he obviously wants someone who can plug straight in. To give it an extra bit of spin, do you think that there might be a case that with Paji, he's come out and said that he likes the unit of Delaney and Dan. Do you think that there's a risk that with it being such a crucial position to the way the team plays? That by bringing someone extra in with the intention of playing them immediately, that it might actually destabilise? Well, if you remember, Gabby Donne and Delaney had a pretty good turn about partnership going just before we signed down. They started to get a little bit of understanding there. They were starting to play quite well to keep clean sheets, to put in solid defensive displays. And I remember all of us said when we signed Dan and he went straight into the team and Gabby Donne got dropped immediately. That's a bit harsh on Gabby Donne. It'll be that there was a clear upgrade, but sometimes you've got to make marginal improvements in each position if you want to sort of push on. I just don't... When we got promoted, I said that he needs to replace the name because he won't step up. He's completely provenly wrong on that. He's been excellent, but you know that at any day it could go off. He's getting old, it could go off that cliff. They obviously... It looked like it went at times last season. Yeah, yeah, but they obviously want... You know, what it said to me that the English League thing is that they want someone they can plug in straight away. They don't want to have the swari thing where they need six months to let him bed in, you know. We might not be able to afford that. If Scott Dan goes down injured, there could be an issue this season. You could be looking towards the relegation spots. I don't think fortunately the rest of the team is good enough that we'd probably be able to blast goals and get away with it somehow winning every going 4-2. But there is a need for a set of that there. I think no one argues with that. I think Hangolin and Delaney are both obviously getting on in age. And you've got to have someone top notch, but I probably appreciate more than most of that. I think it's important not to just buy a player to the sake of it. I think Paju is only going to go for players he wants and he's not going to be forced or he's not going to feel the pressure to go over someone that isn't quite right for him, which is a good thing. Did we miss out on Chester at that price point? People have mocked it for being really expensive. I think he's quite a good player. I think he, again, would have been perfect because he could have started right in. You've got to remember, the prices we pay for players now, the kind of wicked thing, you're paying £6m up front. You're buying off another Premier League club. You're not going to get much off anyone for less than that now. Not just how it is. Any player you go for, the price, so the guy who chose you about to sell from Alzberg, Applebubber Rama. I beg your pardon? Sorry. He's going to go for 25 million euros or 25, 30 million euros. If Verda Bremen had come in for him to Alzberg, he would have gone for probably half, if not less. Gary Middleo went to Cardiff and went to Milan. That's what's going to happen with us for every player we go for, because everyone knows how rich the Premier League is. We benefit from that. We've got to pay the price because of that as well. Chester for 8 million, I think, was a good deal. Obviously, certain people were discreet. Segwaying into another question, Dominic Donantonio. Oh, hello, Dominic. Says that he and his friend went through a list of possible first team players and asks, "Is the squad heavy?" And if so, who would make to struggle? Who would people in there or like heavy as well? Too many players. Who does he think would struggle to make the team? As in, out of all the... Let's say, for example, that we have to... The best players you say could get sold or loaned out and no one would care. Yeah. So, let's say who the top three of you are. Barry Bannon. Barry Bannon. When he always wanted by clubs, which is good. But does he want to leave? Campbell. Do he want to leave? He only wants one club. That's his problem. I think Fraser Campbell's not in the picture, right? Yeah, exactly. Take out those four or five players, and suddenly, and Friars, although he... I'll take him off my hands. Friars, Jesus. But, yeah, take those... When you take those players out, you're left with about 23, 24. And you're sort of making room for a Campbell or a potential new signing. So, in terms of the 25, we're absolutely fine. Have Paris ever made a worse signing pound for pound than Zeki Friars? Jimmy Cabot? Oh, classic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they matched him. Okay. That was only on loan. Jimmy Cabot, because it was a famine. Zeki Friars, seemingly with no scouting whatsoever. Is that the one that's ever seen him just thought he was terrible? Was that a Warnock thing last minute in the window? He was trying someone who was saying last minute. I don't know if it was Warnock behind it, but it was... Yeah. It's not turned out well, is it? He's not going to have a career even at championships, though. I would say. And yet, drives it Bentley. Isn't that fun? That's no. He's driven, yeah. He's driven in a Bentley. Oh, there we go. He's got a driver. Right. I think, yeah. To me, it seems that the obvious ones are the obvious ones, but I guess we touched on it, maybe, that someone, like Joe Ledley, or maybe even Mila Jegnack might end up being sold. That's a grey area, guys. I'd say, with others too. Obviously, you'd wipe us out. You'd never sell both. You'd only sell one, I think. I agree with the white girl. Kind of seen her. Glenn Murray. Why not? It has been taught. Well, obviously, there's interesting Glenn Murray. And you can understand why he got it, as well, right? Right. Well, the first thing for a boy, if he gets guaranteed first. Oh, you do. Even Brighton want to take him back, you know? There are clubs in the championship, but we do anything. We do anything to have a player who has got a proven record of scoring goals in the championship, and he's even done it in the Premier League. I mean, at the end of last season, he looked really good. Look at his age. He wants to play every week. You can understand why he want to go. Obviously, no one at Panes would, I think, feel badly towards him if he did leave. But I'd prefer to lose him on a personal level. Really? Gay. I think Gayle's still, I mean, you can get money for him. But Murray, like, he's not really going to have a huge future at Panes, because even if he stays, if we signed the big striker that we wanted to sign this summer and didn't, if we signed someone in 12 months' time when Banford's gone back, then Murray's still not in the picture. It's nice to have him as a second-stashed third-choice striker you can throw on, but it's not fair on him. I don't think whereas Gayle, there is upside. Although, in the end, we can put as much weight on what Pardier says in the press as we want, he, today or yesterday, came out saying that Murray is very much still his number one, number nine. And it was, when I read that, that I thought it's probably unlikely that we sell him this window. I guess, at what point is that? To make Connor Wickham knuckle down now, because he's come with a bit of a reputation, is that to, you know, try and pimp him out? Murray was told at the start of the summer that he was going to be the first-choice striker. So maybe it's that he takes part in his work? He thinks Wickham maybe just needs to learn behind him for six months. Maybe in January they consider. I think every Palace family delight, if he stays, is just... I think it's proof of just how many great options Palace have, and the fact that we're actually talking about letting players like Joel Edley, or maybe Millet Jeddonac or Dwight Gayle... What do you say on Glenn Murray? Where do you go? What do you do with Gayle? To me, I think that Gayle's problem is that he is someone who plays in a forward pairing, and we don't have the option to play on him. It's too late, wasn't it? He's basically an Andy Johnson in that guy. Andy Johnson could play what I'm talking about. Well, he did, and he did. But the difference I would argue is that the way that we played with Andy Johnson in the side was purely aimed at directing everything through him. Andy's best player together. We have so many better players now than we did in that season in the Premier League. The thing with Gayle last season was that he was a guy that you'd... It was great to have on the bench. Towards the end of the season he didn't even come on at all, but you'd think, if we needed to change the game to something slightly different, you could put him on the wing. And now because of the padding out of the squad, the lassie or wilf will punch him. - Someone else started into that player? - Yeah. Well, exactly. So suddenly you've got other players on the bench, and you don't see... You certainly don't see Gayle as the top four or five options from the bench, if he's making the bench at all. So for me, I'm giving the amount of money we could command for a striker who scored... It got a half-decent Premier League scoring record. I would be happy to see him go and keep Murray for the sake of another season at potentially scoring a few goals and the effect that he has on Wickham Bamford, et cetera, et cetera. I thought that was an excellent question. I know that we've had a couple of other people on Facebook ask similar ones, so thank you to all of you. Next one is George Sheldon. - George. Everything is going great so far this year, and the future in general is bright, but is anyone still scared, will somehow find a way to get relegated? - Well, I think Ed drew upon one thing that could go horribly wrong, and that's got down, and it's why I was getting a read. He really wanted in the summer when there was the talk that he wanted to go to Everton and Everton wanted him, and it was probably going to happen, et cetera, et cetera. I thought, well, where do we go from here? Like, if we're starting next season with Handland and Delaney at the back, we'd all due respect to them, and they do deserve respect, particularly Delaney for the reasons Ed said. You know, we're going to be in a lot more difficulty than we were the season before, so if anything is to happen to someone, like it's got down, then we're in trouble, or could be more so than anyone else in the squad, I think. - Right. - If down and goodbye went down, I suppose is what we'd say, right? If they both got long-term injuries, you'd probably think we might be in a bit of trouble. You'd like to think that, because of the work that's been done to the squad over the last two or three windows, you could survive even those two going down. Kebai clearly makes us a better team, a better squad, but he was signed in a position, as we've discussed a number of times, that we had plenty of cover in. And I think, whilst the obvious flaw in the Handland Delaney partnership is pace, albeit Scott Dan isn't the quickest. If you forget the first couple of games that Handland played, he's never let us down from September onwards last year. Every time he's come in, he's been fantastic. Now, he probably doesn't have the body to last a 38-game season, but in the short term, I think we'd cope without... To answer the question, I think it would take a calamitous series of injuries, fortune, bad refereeing decisions to send us down. Pause you get the England job, you've punched in the side, he doesn't want it anymore. That could have a big effect, I mean, I'm not going to be the first choice or anything, but that could be the undoing. If we have a really... I mean, the only way I could see Pageo getting the job, if we have a really good season this year, like top six/eight, and then Roy probably going to get pinned off to the Eros, and then who would have the choices, Southgate kind of damaged himself at the Eros, you've got this year, but you haven't 21 euros, sorry. Carrying level, I don't know why you'd take it because he's got a great knife as it is. Who's there after that? I wonder whether Pageo would actually even, if, for example, in six months' time, if he was actually offered the job, would he take it? I don't think he would. I think he'd see it as an opportunity missed. It's a crap job. Well, it is, in fairness, like, when you consider the options now, and let's say, if he has a good time at Palace for the next two or three years... He would bite their hand off, as my view. I think he wouldn't think to us. Only two or three years, but... He would not think to us, I think. Well, immediately, as in six months' time or... No, it wouldn't come up in six months' time. I think the only time he's going to come up realistically is after the Euro is right next summer. Do you think he'd take it then? Yeah, he's an ego. Me, yeah, he's an ego, isn't he? That's not bad. A brilliant ego, mate, yeah. Yeah, but, you know, he's an English manager of a football team. The England job comes up. It's going to appeal to him hugely for the reason. Although it's a talker as well, when Newcastle finished fifth, wasn't there of him maybe being a candidate? And it probably won't have escaped him after they're, sort of, mini-down for when they sort of fought in his stock that that sort of went with. That it could be his really good next opportunity. If we have that, the good season. So, you know, he's been considered, like, I'm overtaking it either, I don't think. Someone once said, "It's a crap job because everyone hates you unless you win the world cup or you die." But I think Paji thanks his chances of winning the world cup. I'm not dying. There we go. Thanks for that question. Jessica Holly Wales asks, "Hi, Jessica." Is that a female listener? It is. We finally managed to soften our tone and stuff, obviously. Yeah. And now, instantly, I'm done it all. I'm drawing attention to that. Brilliant. The fourth wall is broken. She asks, "Who do you think will be Palace's key player this season?" Goodbye, obviously. You know, it's the marquee signing. He's going to, you'd imagine, given the outlay for him and given the fact he's come here to get games ahead of the Euros and given the fan phase come here with, it'll start pretty much every game. And I think he'll be a brilliant, brilliant player. I'll send a midfield berth. I'll go with him. It's an obvious... If I have to say someone different for the sake of it, I would say... You don't have to. Wilfred Zaha, because I'm thinking of a reason, because if Palace Art are doing a thing this season, I think, upwardly my... Cabar will obviously be a huge part of it. He'll be central, both literally and figuratively, to the whole project. But Zaha, if he can learn how to finish, it's a... He's called 15 goals from the wing in a season. That is a top six, top eight side. If we want a cup, you're going to need a guy like him to, in the vital moments to cut it open. I don't think we've got a strike. It's going to score lots of goals. I think they have to come from elsewhere. If he scores 15 goals in a season, that will be making Palace more upwardly mobile than Cabar having a really good season. Well, it's got down to the obvious other one, right? Give him up. No, you've had your answer. If I were to actually say someone, it might be... Who asked you? Well, I'm just, I thought, in my opinion. Murray Appar as well. No, James MacArthur, I think, will be a surprising one. Yeah, brilliant. Because I think he's the kind of player that will allow other midfielders to do their work. He saw against Norwich. He's not tall, you know, he's not that kind of... He's not that kind of defensive midfielder, but in terms of doing the groundwork... Is it a terrific bloody player in the game, Jesus? Really good. Nice, that was cyst for Cabar as well. Yeah. So good last season, MacArthur. So I think he might be the player that... He might be the kind of player that goes around a match that people don't actually pay as much attention to. But I think as if you can draw that out bigger. With Cabar there, people aren't going to pay attention to Algoode. They didn't last season, and they definitely won't realise this. He's now a good MacArthur. Because everyone's going to, all the focus will be on Cabar. But giving him that new contract, I think, he knows he's one of the most important players in this Paju Palace site for sure. That made you feel three that started against Norwich. The ones we've... The two just discussed and punching. Sorry, and much. Add in punching and chatting to the mix. You've suddenly got a bunch of players who are really, really good with the ball. Which is really exciting, we've not had that. Even in our rise to the leagues, we've had a Jedi next to a KG. We've had, perhaps at times, an Owen Garvin and a Moritz. But this is a real step up in terms of... Being able to handle... Would you say this is the best palace team in terms of ability that we've... The best palace squad has ever seen. Yeah, it's an easy answer right now, to... Obviously, I mean, it wouldn't be... Yeah, the 1990 debate, the question is easily skirted around with the squad factor. But it's absolutely true, right? Without doubt the strongest squad we've ever had, if Zaha turns into Ian Wright, which isn't beyond the realm's possibility. And we do get to another cut final. What pisses off to our players? Of course, it's the best case, it's the best and it spends the rest of his media wildlife being a dick. If Will... Will can be... Like, as good as he likes, none of the big clubs are going to come in for him until he really, really flies because of what I've been with many nights. So, it's a plan that you know you've got for the next however many years. With that in mind, we've got one final question from Jack Pierce, which is about Will. Hi, Jack. Does he... do you think that the competition for places will be the making of Will? He looked brilliant on Saturday against Norwich. I think having strength and depth in those areas means that he will not be over exerted and over used, because Padu seems to like this thing, and I kind of agree with him, that drops one of them, drops Will for drops, but that's you doing it a bit. A lot of season till the other day, probably more of a fitness reasons, but bring one of them on with half an hour to go. Let them cause absolute carnage. If you're a tired left back, the last thing you want to see is Willford's Aha coming up with half an hour to go. They've got Sako as well, I think it's really good. We've got Leech and Jung who is alive. So, there's all sort of, kind of depth there now that I think it's not maybe the competition because he knows that Padu thinks he's the boy, you know. I think it's more that he's just really good and he's going to be fresher and he's going to have a better team around him. He's going to have Joanne Kabai threading in passes. And he's, like what Vengal always used to say about his teams, you've got a team of 23, 24 year olds. They're going to improve much more year on year than a team of 31 year olds. And we've got a core of the team who are still very young. We're still in that area where they can improve Will've being the prime example. We touched on Wickham. But Will's 22, 23. And the, you forget that sometimes, yeah, because of how many years he's been sort of in the palace consciousness, but he's still still. Oh yeah, I've played a lot of games. And yeah, we talk about burnout. He's been disguised, played easily over 100 championship games. He probably will need a rest over the course of the next couple of years. So yeah, the strength and depth whilst clearly being useful for a number of factors is going to... It's going to particularly help Will. I thought there were a couple of things from the Norwich game that were pleasing about Will. The first one is that he seems to have worked on actually running with the ball a little bit. Which, what I mean by that is in terms of just using that raw pace. Because in the past, what I felt was that when Will got the ball and he was in possession, he often found that the ball just, he just gets stuck under it a little bit rather than actually being able to take on defenders and go round them. He did that brilliantly against Norwich. The other thing was, in his interview with Chris Grissen after the game, he said that for him the biggest thing was getting that first bit of skill right. And after that he just settled down. Which kind of shows that a level of immaturity, you know, that with his age he'll probably, that'll get better and better. And it's just a matter of the positivity going through him, isn't it? Yeah, he's clearly a confidence player and will be throughout the rest of this career. But that side of his game, Will developed, he noticed it in the full and friendly. He was getting a pre-season friendly, he was getting really frustrated with himself. Pargy has a word with him, suddenly he's a much better player. And as he gets older and wiser and more mature, he'll get better at dealing with that. Yeah, he's primed to have an excellent season, touch wood, excellent stuff. Right, that's the end of part two of three. Part two of three, that's right. Join us in part three of three for our preview of the RC game. Welcome back to part three of the five year plan podcast. Yay! Start the new season. Brought to you by JCIS, that's JC Innovation and Strategy. The global research and brand consultancy from South London. What's that website like that? It's JC-IS.com. There you go, that works, yeah. In addition to vector printing, and that's www.vector.co.uk, that's vector with her. Okay, great, so Arsenal coming up at the weekend. So we're going to just briefly skirt over the issues with that purely because we've discussed quite a bit of it already. They have a bit of a disappointing performance against Westland, didn't they? Do you think that that will have a positive impact for us or a negative one, Ed? Yeah, bad news for us, I think. I've already said it, I think. You want them to be a bit complacent coming into these sort of games, and probably on the back of an away Champions League trip, we managed to get them second game up after they've just lost it until Westland. So yeah, I think they're going to be good on the counter attack, but if we let them have a lot more of the ball, bring in someone like Jet Knackers going to destroy things, get a bit of luck on the day, work on those set pieces, which we've been doing really well last year or so. Did Westland show the model of how to go against them at the moment? They were pretty compact when they and I thought Westland didn't do anything out of the ordinary. I thought they were what you'd expect the team to be at the Emirates, and obviously they got the goal. Mental -- well, mental from jet flying out, the marking was terrible for the set-piece goal, and the one at the near post, obviously Chamberlain was probably the best player on the day, inexplicably losing the ball just outside his own penalty area. We're not going to get probably as lucky as that, they're making two terrible errors. So, as I say, I think if we focus on set-pieces, focus on keeping compact, the noise will be good, it's on TV. The players usually kind of raise the note a little bit for that, I think. So, you know, fingers crossed. Mike, who do you think that will be asking this biggest threat? So, they -- okay, it's West Ham, yeah. Ox was -- Ox had Chamberlain in the first half looked like the only one who's going to break them down. Clearly, they've got danger all over the pitch, and if Ozil turns up, because Zola turns up, then, you know, any number of others, you're in trouble. The key -- the key is going to be, as Ed said, to keep compact, to keep narrow. That's what West Ham did. They played that diamond in midfield. Unbelievable performance from a 16-year-old. Yeah, he's great. The most important position in that game. And he's a defender as well. I think that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, and he -- on match the day two, they pointed out his first touch, which was just taking a ball out of the air on his chest and just knocking a pass over his shoulder. I wouldn't expect Jedi to do that in the same position. Why not? Because I've got a -- Because he's not totally -- He's not led with that. But, yeah, and I think having someone in that gap in front of -- in front of the two centre backs, so Dan Delaney don't get pulled out position, because Dan can get pulled out position as well. And people were quick to jump on -- on demo for that. And then that gives us a chance. But if Arsenal turned out firing all cylinders, play to the best of their ability, there won't be much that even this vastly improved pallet team can do. So keep it compact, yeah, rely on set pieces, rely on the counterattack and hope for a bit more luck. Would you say that maybe -- to kind of counter that, would you say that West Ham didn't show them the respect that a lot of sides do? And that maybe that would be -- I mean, we don't have the -- I mean, we've -- for their py -- py-a -- py-a -- py-a -- py-a -- whatever. For that play, we've got goodbye. You know, for the wing -- for our -- we've got that wing -- wing player kind of creativity as well. Do you think that -- that obviously there's risk with a match like that in any case? But do you think Pardee would actually approach it from a perspective keeping it tight? I mean, we play like that anyway, but... I think I'm going to perhaps slightly go off on a tangent then answer your question. The other element of the West Ham performance is that they've had any number of Europa League games up to now, probably competitive games, admittedly not all the first team have played in all of those games. But you can make an argument that they were ready, far more ready for the start of the season than Arsenal were. And when you're setting up a pre-season, you very deliberately don't plan to peak on day one. And I wonder if Palace looked slightly more sluggish against Norris than they might have done under a Pulus pre-season, which in the long run might not be a bad thing. But I'm not sure that we have the same -- that we play in the same way as West Ham. We don't have -- we don't have quite the same place to set up defensively as they did. And we're just not as fit as they were, which you really need to be. Not just physically fit, but mentally sharp as well, because the way Arsenal play relies on all your defensive seven or eight players to really be on the ball mentally. For us, Cabay will probably be one of the key players. Other than that, Andy, who do you think will be a player that could make a contribution in the game? Oh, that's a good question. Balassie. Because I'm going to go with, "Podge, you like this on a bit of Maverick?" And I think playing Balassie through the middle could be the Maverick move that he will go in. Obviously, maybe he's still by not going anywhere near come 12-30 on Saturday, off the name of the team to announce. But waiting to play Balassie through the middle, I think he could give them a -- give Palace a real outlet and give them a bit of a torrid time. So I'm going to go with Balassie. He's got the physicality to hurt teams who play like Arsenal and also the pace and directness of the usual stuff that we love about Balassie. And we're not going to control possession against them because they're far, far better than us passing the football. That's obvious and it goes without saying. But the way we hurt them, if we're going to hurt them is by a case he's doing stuff on the break with the presence like Balassie. So if he does start, then it's him for me. I bring a man, McCarthy, back into the conversation because he's had a tough opening game. He's on Telly, he's one of the best tyres in the country. I'm one of those stunning goalkeeper games, you know, Windsor fans either. Keeps Palace in it, Parts Copping over the Nick one. I think that solves everyone's problems, isn't it? I'm just going to ask, do you think it's realistic that Hennessy might get the nod? No, no chance. Mike, who do you think would be? They could be busy solving world hunger and poverty. All the other things that he's capable of doing is the other two. Not from me, Mike. Who do you think, Mike, who do you think it could be the person to make a difference for us? But possibly it's something that occurred to me earlier, that we haven't discussed for a while. The pitch, the new pitch, specifically. So I suppose the groundsman to answer your question. But the common assumption about a good pitch versus a bad pitch is that it favours a team that passes the ball. But from what I'm led to believe, what Warnock said, what other managers said, the big issue with our pitch last season, was that to lay it, they had to have this sand base that made it really heavy and made players like Balassie and Wilf play to rely on explosive pace. That much more sluggish, that much more tired. They covered less ground at home than they did away from home. That's been the first time that we see them on a proper decent pitch at home. We played at the end of our season and it was dreadful. It was everything as bad as it looked to those last few games of the Premier League season. It's more that you didn't have the confidence, because it was ripping up. You didn't have the confidence to change direction quickly, to spring off one foot or two other, because you're just going to do your ankle, JD, did his ankle. That sort of thing, when you're Wilf, when you're Yannick, and you know that off the mark you can beat that man up against. But you have to be able to trust your feet underneath you, otherwise you're going to get hurt. And I think if they know they can do that, that's going to be a huge, huge advantage for them. So we've covered pretty much everything, I think. Predictions. Yeah, oh, yeah, predictions. What do you think, Mike? Um, go on a score draw, score draw, Andy. Uh, all that's ambitious. I think we've just got such a terrible, um, record against our Snork, historically. Over the last, god, how many decades? Probably understandably. Um, and obviously it's irrelevant, but I'm a football fan, so I like being illogical and irrelevant. Sorry, I'm not naive. I can't see that negative, because that's kind of my, my thing. Uh, I think they'll be us, too, Neil. Um, we never get smashed pretty much by anyone in this league. Not since we've come up this time, I think, apart from that Liverpool game when we're three, not that half time, but even though they didn't kick on. So, two, one, defeat for me. I think a two, one win. Ooh, there we go. Oh, there we go. All right, there we go. Get some good odds on that. You have to say that, though, don't you, so. Wow. Yeah. Right. Thank you, everyone, for joining us, Mike, Ed, and Andy. Pleasure. Go to our website, www.fiveyearplanfansing.co.uk. Yep. Thank you to everyone for the questions. That's five year plan, with an F. Yeah, it's five year plan with an F. Put in the F and five year plan. We, we, they're also some, uh, teachers out from Jesse Boyce at the moment. Yep. At the Goldfather, which are pretty cool. Super hour ones, so. Bye one of them. And, uh, look also. And thank you to all of you listeners for joining us. Uh, we'll speak with you, for you. Uh, next time. Probably won't speak with him. Well, no, I think we'll speak probably at the moment. Yeah. It's presumptuous. Yeah. We'll speak for supporters, right? We're hosting this next pod. We're going to Edinburgh. We just thought we'd go up to Edinburgh and say hi to J.D. 'Cause, yeah, we'd like dressing up on top. It's Tigers. Yeah, obviously I find that. Yeah. Right. See you next time. Bye. Bye. ♪♪ My brother-in-law died suddenly. And now my sister and her kids have to sell their home. That's why I told my husband we could not put off getting life insurance any longer. An agent offered us a 10-year, $500,000 policy for nearly $50 a month. Then we called Select Quote. Select Quote found us identical coverage for only $19 a month. A savings of $369 a year. Whether you need a $500,000 policy or a $5 million policy, Select Quote could save you more than 50% on term life insurance. For your free quote, go to selectquote.com. Select quote.com. That's select quote.com. Select quote. 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FOOTBALL. IS. BACK. And so is the FYP Podcast! JD is away this week. So is Enders. And Kevin. But Rob is back in the hosting chair with guests Andy Street, Mike Wicks and Ed Malyon. The boys discuss the win at Norwich, their love for Cabaye, your questions and the upcoming match at Arsenal. Up the Palace!
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