You can’t help but admire what Patrick Vieira has done at Crystal Palace, and for that, the club’s owners deserve much credit.
It just shows you that with a bit of support - and a bit of luck - what can happen when a club invests in a manager who has fresh ideas, and a decent pedigree. Palace were doing OK under Roy Hodgson: they were an organised team who were always in a solid position in the Premier League, and never looked in any danger of relegation when he was there.
We don’t praise owners very often in this column, but to their credit, they were ambitious enough to want more than that, and also brave enough to take a chance on a manager who maybe wasn’t an obvious choice, after being sacked by a relatively small French club. We see it so often in the Premier League: the same managers on a carousel, getting off and on. Sometimes, as an aspiring coach myself, it’s frustrating to see the same faces always popping up.
