Carrick was linked in the Guardian this morning, as was Vincent Kompany. I’d be amazed if either of those two went to Palace. Palace are just about to get to that point that pretty much every club of that size gets to where you peak and then slowly tail off, then get relegated.
Boro, Stoke, Southampton, Birmingham, Sunderland, West Ham, Leicester, Forest, the Sheffield clubs, Leeds, Wolves… the list goes on. All of those have had good spells in the top flight and then dropped out. In fact Palace have done absolutely brilliantly to stay up there for a decade.
The thing with them is there’s no real glamour, no real ‘narrative’ for the media to follow and project, for some reason. So their achievements are rarely properly remarked upon. What more could a club of that size and with that amount of financial backing reasonably expect to achieve? Continuous top flight football and a cup run or two is just about their limit. And they have done those things.
IMO of course.