It was Wilfried Zaha who, in the afterglow of a riotous FA Cup quarter-final dismissal of Everton, felt compelled to remind his Crystal Palace team-mates that these are exceptional times.
The Ivorian punched a message into one of the squad’s various WhatsApp groups. He is understood to have expressed his excitement at the trip to Wembley to come, making clear just how significant this was for the club — his club — and urged all to ensure standards do not slip in the weeks ahead, even as nine first-team players prepared to depart on international duty. But, most of all, he told them all to take a moment to appreciate just how lucky they are to have Patrick Vieira guiding them on this journey.
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That was apparently the cue for a flurry of fist pump, raised hands and flame emojis to litter the thread in agreement.
It was the kind of praise that would leave Vieira, a man whose self-deprecating style makes him reluctant even to refer back to his glittering playing days, squirming in his seat. But, surely, privately he would’ve been chuffed. Zaha is an icon at Palace, a player who grew up at the club and a figure who personifies their rise from Championship mediocrity to what will be a decade in the Premier League. If he is exhilarated at the way things are progressing, plenty must be going right.
For now, thoughts of Chelsea at Wembley and the fifth FA Cup semi-final in Palace’s history can wait. There are other positive distractions on the horizon, not least a collision with Arsenal, the team Vieira once led, at Selhurst Park on Monday night.
The hosts will go into that fixture comfortable in mid-table and sporting a positive goal difference. Any lingering concerns over relegation have been dispelled by an unbeaten away run that extends back to Boxing Day, and a solitary defeat in 10 matches in all competitions means the mood is peppy. Not bad for a side tipped to struggle in the aftermath of last summer’s voluntary upheaval, not to mention a manager who was favourite to be the first of term to suffer the sack.
Some might wonder what the fuss is all about. At first glance, Palace are currently where they tend to finish: halfway up the division. Others might point out that a record of only seven wins is hardly jaw-dropping, even if encouraging performances have not always yielded victories. In truth, there have been trying periods over a campaign that was never likely to prove straightforward in such a treacherous division. Tension had actually been mounting ahead of a trip to Watford towards the end of February, and a meeting with Vieira’s predecessor Roy Hodgson, after six fruitless league games. The sense back then was that Palace were teetering. That the manager might be under pressure.
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Yet that game was won emphatically and, in the period since, the team’s zestful and inventive approach — the same dynamism that had illuminated their autumn — has come flooding back to deliver more prosperous rewards. The sight of free-spirited, fearless players of real quality tearing into contests with such youthful exuberance has been restorative. The winter lull has dissipated. There have been times when this side have been thrilling to watch. The atmosphere around the place is buoyant.
“The happiness comes down to results,” says the Frenchman overseeing it all. “It is about being sure of what we want to achieve and trying to maintain the mood – not be too low when we don’t win, or too high when we do. Try and be consistent. We went through a really difficult period but we didn’t change the way we wanted to work, the normal meetings we do during the week, or what we’ve been doing since the beginning of the season.
“That gave players the confidence and calmness to believe. We trust the players we have.”
Just nine months into his first role as a Premier League manager and Vieira, the man who was supposed to be out of his depth, is already attracting admiring glances from elsewhere.
Mid-table and a cup run might seem unremarkable, but it is the context of that summer of mass departures, coupled with a manager whose time at OGC Nice had fizzled out with the sack in December 2020, that elevates the job Vieira has done to date at Palace.
He was no managerial rookie. His two-and-a-half-year stint on the Cote d’Azur had actually encompassed 89 games and qualification for the Europa League. Yet the strains placed on the youngest team in Ligue 1 by European competition were too much. He had departed after five successive defeats and, for a while, recharged his batteries back at home in Le Cannet, outside Cannes. Interest expressed by clubs in recruiting him was knocked back as he reflected on everything he had learned at the Allianz Riviera.
By the end of March last year he was ready for a return, was watching games and analysing possible opportunities. It was only once Hodgson informed Palace that he would be leaving at the end of the season that the south London club really became an option.
Vieira was well aware he was never first choice at Selhurst Park. There was an initial conversation at the home of chairman Steve Parish — an early opportunity to hear the Frenchman’s thoughts and understand his vision for the team — but Vieira was just one of a number of candidates under consideration for the role soon to be vacated by Palace’s longest-serving manager since Steve Coppell in the early 1990s. The club’s initial shortlist included Frank Lampard, Valerien Ismael, Eddie Howe and Steve Cooper.
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Nuno Espirito Santo’s surprise availability prompted them to push hard for the Portuguese — perhaps a safer bet given his experience in England — for a period in early June, only to grow frustrated at the former Wolverhampton Wanderers manager’s procrastination. They then prioritised Lucien Favre, who had left Borussia Dortmund at around the same time Vieira departed Nice. Yet the Swiss, having agreed to join, had second thoughts overnight to leave Palace back at square one.
Vieira had been exploring his own options in the interim. Lille, the recently crowned French champions, were eager to take him on after losing Christophe Galtier to Nice. Fenerbahce, too, expressed an interest. There were clubs in Major League Soccer, and even national teams, attracted to his candidacy. Fulham, too, were keen.
But while there was still the chance of a role in the Premier League the Frenchman would not commit elsewhere.
Two further conversations, with Parish on his yacht moored off the Cote d’Azur and on a Zoom call alongside other members of the club staff, eventually persuaded Palace that this was a man who would buy into their intention to revamp the squad and style. It was to be a full 180, attempting to change the entire dynamic of the club. Vieira, who was commuting regularly to London at the time to work as a pundit on ITV’s coverage of Euro 2020, delivered a presentation on his ideas for the squad. He asked his own questions of the club’s ambitions and expectations, and digested the recruitment plan drawn up by sporting director Dougie Freedman. All parties seemed satisfied.
There was a handshake in the south of France and, after a brief wobble as Palace’s hierarchy took stock of what was about to happen, the signing of a three-year contract in London in the first week in July, just ahead of the players’ return for pre-season training. Those close to Vieira were not surprised that he leapt, two-footed, into the new role.
“He’s a worker,” says a source familiar with the methods of the World Cup and European Championship winner. “In his mind it’s always, ‘Let’s go. Let’s get started’. He would have seen Palace as a new challenge and realised there was no time to dream. You arrive in London and, the next day, you start. You can’t have a stroll around the city or reminisce about your past there. He would have gone straight into work mode.”
His immediate task was to integrate new players into a squad in a state of flux. It was Freedman, backed by Parish and the club’s American investors, who earmarked the new signings. Their strategy last summer was almost flawless. The deals struck — a little over £60 million spent — and smoothed by Parish, Freedman and Iain Moody were remarkable when one considers the impact made in the period since by Marc Guehi, Joachim Andersen, Michael Olise, Conor Gallagher, Odsonne Edouard and Will Hughes.
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Vieira recognised the extensive groundwork that had been put in by Freedman and his scouts prior to his arrival and, while relationships between those at the top of the club did inevitably take time to bed in, was comfortable with the overall strategy.
He was consulted on all the additions. Indeed, his input helped coax some of the new faces in. He offered a star quality to the process. Andersen had played against his Nice side while at Lyon. Olise, a junior France international, had other suitors but chose Palace after speaking with the man who had won the World Cup, three Premier League titles and four scudetti. There were similar Zoom conversations with Gallagher and Guehi, and explanations as to what specific role he envisaged for them in his team.
The project was bold. The opportunity was exciting. The manager was persuasive.
The Frenchman was living in a hotel close to his new club’s training ground in Beckenham at the time, with life hectic as he assembled his backroom staff and attempted to impress his philosophy upon a squad whose priority was to build up fitness. Vieira worked long hours, often leaving the Copers Cope Road complex late and poring over plans for the next day’s sessions while eating alone in one of the suburb’s Italian restaurants. By the time his young family joined him in England, adding the school run to his duties, he had moved into an apartment with their home in north London still under construction.
That building work remains ongoing. Having his new players accept a very different style of play, more expansive than under previous regimes, did not take as long.
There were double sessions, with tactical drills designed to encourage the players to accept possession in tight areas or build up from the back with pinged short passes. It helped that those brought in were so comfortable on the ball, but the personnel already at the club — and this is no criticism of the old regime, whose ability to retain Premier League status provided Palace with this foundation upon which to build — embraced change. That can be marked in the progress made by Tyrick Mitchell, the liberation of Zaha, or the contributions of Vicente Guaita, James McArthur, Jeffrey Schlupp, Jordan Ayew and Joel Ward to the collective. It was new and different. It was also intense.
“The sessions were really hard,” said Andersen. “We want to play out from the back, to press high, to come with a lot of energy. Sometimes football is simple — it’s just about changing a few things. With the press, if we want to press high, we need to do it together. If someone is closing a line on the right, the guy behind him has to push up on the guy who is in front of him. We needed to understand each other’s movements and that is what we were trying to learn.
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“But what we were being asked to do is the same way I want to play football. Those were the talks I had with Patrick before I came here. What he said to me has been true. He’s a good manager with a lot of experience as a player. He knows the game, and I really like the way he thinks. The longer the season has gone on, the more the way the gaffer wants us to play has sunk in.”
A sense of realism accompanied the team into the new campaign. Vieira had no previous experience of Premier League management. His coaching staff who accompanied him were also new to this level. Indeed, what tension that has occasionally flared up behind the scenes at Palace has tended to centre upon those around the manager rather than Vieira himself.
Moreover, the team’s opening 10 fixtures technically constituted the most daunting start for any side in the division, with games against seven of the previous season’s top eight. The message, from hierarchy through to management, was for all to remain calm and stay strong even if results were initially sluggish. The 3-0 slump at Chelsea on the opening afternoon seemed to confirm those fears, and there were times when the manager had to reassure the players that they were on the right path.
But that thrashing at Stamford Bridge ended up being one of only two losses in that sequence of league fixtures, a run that culminated in a 2-0 win at the Etihad Stadium in late October.
Some themes have recurred in the months since. There remains frustration that points have been spurned too often late on in games, while a frailty at set pieces occasionally flares up even now. There have been periods, too, when scepticism has reared over in-game management, particularly around substitutions that have occasionally felt more disruptive than transformative. But Palace have been hard to beat, enterprising and pleasing on the eye. Possession and attacking stats are all up. Evidence of progress is all around.
It has helped having so many forward options from which to choose. Christian Benteke, one of the side’s remaining elder statesmen, had lost his place in the starting line-up by the time Palace secured that eye-catching success at the champions. The Belgian is understood to have chatted with some of the home substitutes as they warmed up together on the sidelines that afternoon, with the City players struck by the striker’s praise of the manager who had left him out.
Benteke, rather than displaying any annoyance at his omission, instead heaped praise on the spirit of unity the new man had fostered.
Much, as ever, boils down to man-management.
All those who have been in Vieira’s company at the training ground are struck by his humility. The staff, from academy coaches to administrative employees, are at ease in his company. He may be physically imposing but there seems to be no ego there, which is extraordinary for a figure who was inducted into the Premier League’s hall of fame last month and won every major honour in his playing days. “He always comes into the kitchen to see what we’re doing, always happy, smiling,” Lauren Sinclair, one of the chefs at Copers Cope Road, told the club website recently. “Just lovely to work with.”
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But the playing days are never mentioned in-house. The 45-year-old has drawn a distinction between what he achieved on the pitch and what he hopes to bring to the dug-out. Where he does lean on that wealth of experience striding through midfield at Arsenal and Inter Milan, Manchester City and France, is in the empathy he can offer members of his squad these days. He knows what makes players tick. Both young and old in the ranks have been sponges soaking up his knowledge.
“The gaffer knows how to get the best out of me,” said Gallagher. “He knew how he wanted me to play and the best way I could show what I can do. He told me that at the start of the season and when Patrick Vieira is telling you that, you listen. He’s given me confidence and it’s been amazing working under him. A big part of the success I’ve had is down to him.”
All the squad have been taken aside at some point for one-on-one advice.
He has found a level of trust with Zaha that is not affected by the reality that, while they are undoubtedly still a better team with the forward involved, Palace are not quite as reliant upon him as previously. The youth-team graduate was substituted with 18 minutes still to play of the home game against Aston Villa in November despite the fact the hosts were in arrears. That was the first time he had been withdrawn, when not injured, with his team behind in a league game since the final game of Sam Allardyce’s spell in charge in May 2017. It felt like a moment. That said, Palace did still lose.
The manager expects much from Zaha as a senior and influential member of this group. He is often the player at whom Vieira animatedly barks instructions from his technical area. But the way the 29-year-old has responded, particularly since returning from the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this year, reflects an experienced professional who appreciates contributing to a rejuvenated collective will deliver more success than excelling merely as an individual. Zaha has spoken glowingly about the style of play, and how liberated he now feels. He realised early on that this was not a fleeting dalliance with a more progressive approach.
He has spoken in a very different way to Olise, a forward whose senior career is in its infancy. The former Reading attacker arrived hampered by a stress fracture to his back and only really broke into the starting line-up with any regularity while Ayew was absent at AFCON. Vieira had to deal with the youngster’s natural impatience and impress upon him the need to take on more tactical instruction and defensive rigour so that, when the time came to unleash him, he would contribute in all aspects of Palace’s play. The fact Olise is now a fixture in the team when fit is evidence he has taken on his manager’s instruction.
As an aside, while Vieira has suggested he never sought to influence the London-born forward when it came to pledging his international allegiance to either France, England, Algeria or Nigeria, it is understood he may have nudged officials at the France Football Federation to ensure they were aware of the player’s progress.
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There have plenty of heart-to-hearts with Eberechi Eze, too, as the attacking midfielder — such a breath of fresh air last term as he took so easily to life in the top flight — rebuilds his fitness after a serious achilles injury. The 23-year-old has found it hard on the sidelines waiting to break back in. There was the chance he might have left on loan in January while Palace, briefly, considered securing Donny van de Beek on a similar arrangement from Manchester United. Vieira was initially keen on signing the Dutchman, only for Everton to trump the interest.
Instead, Eze has been offered cameos, largely in the FA Cup. “And, when Jeff (Schlupp) was suspended against Everton (last month), Ebs’ time came and he had such a good game,” said Vieira. “We try to create a fair competition. I want them to believe there’s a chance for them to play. We want all the players to really feel they are part of what we are trying to do here.”
Perhaps that ability to keep members of his squad on side should not be unexpected. Vieira, the player, left France for life in Italy and England as a youngster and was coached by Fabio Capello, Arsene Wenger, Roberto Mancini and Jose Mourinho over his career. He has captained Arsenal and France. He understands players and how to inspire them, what they suffer and how they thrive, and his communication skills have drawn praise.
His pre-match team talks tend to be brief. He waits five minutes or so before entering the dressing room at half-time, letting the players conduct their own debrief, before weighing in with his own thoughts. If he is frustrated and angry, his outbursts are used sparingly, almost as shock tactics, whether delivered from the sidelines or in the changing room.
“He’s such a relaxed guy, such a good person,” added Guehi while away with England last month. “He’s got so much knowledge and has really helped me to develop my game. So many others, too. He’s a fantastic person, great to be around, and everyone at the club has felt that. He likes a joke and a laugh… he’ll banter with me about anything. What I’m wearing, how stiff he thinks I am when I’m running.
“Sometimes (I give it back), but you can’t say too much. He’s the gaffer.”
That interest from other clubs in Vieira’s progress has been tentative. They are known to have enquired as to his methodology and sought to establish his future plans, but Palace are well protected under the terms of his contract. Manchester City, the club that gave him his first opportunities in coaching with their elite development squad, always envisaged him going far so his progress will not be considered surprising in the game.
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Regardless, he is intent upon making a success of his time in south London, so such distractions can be ignored.
His task remains significant. Whatever happens in the last two months of the campaign, in the Premier League or FA Cup, Palace will remain a work in progress going into the summer transfer window. Last year’s successes in the market will have to be repeated with more players out of contract and others entering the last 12 months of their deals. Freedman is already working on the next phase of the revamp.
Vieira is in regular dialogue with the sporting director and Parish. The sense is there is consensus over targets and faith in the recruiters to secure the necessary additions. Even with the uncertainty currently swirling around the involvement of David Blitzer and Josh Harris, two of the club’s major shareholders who are hoping to purchase Chelsea, there is real optimism that this team will continue to develop. The closed season will be the next opportunity to build.
But there is also an appreciation that the bold decisions taken last summer are paying off. All the ingredients to fail had been there. Half the first team had left, along with a respected and experienced management staff. The club instigated a radical change in playing philosophy and embarked upon a transfer strategy that, inevitably, carried significant risk.
And yet the players have excelled. Vieira, the manager who was supposed to struggle, has thrived.
“We knew how challenging the league would be,” he said last month. “We are in a process and knew it would be hard to make this transition work. We were always going to go through difficult periods. We had to be strong to make sure it worked. But, so far, everything that has happened has gone as we planned.”
It was clearly just those on the outside who did not see this coming.
(Other contributors: David Ornstein, Matt Woosnam; Top image: Sam Richardson)