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.
You have to say at Palace, they took a bit of a chance. Vieira hadn’t coached at the top level before, he’d been at City’s reserve team and in America which isn’t the usual CV that gets a Premier League job. He’d been sacked by Nice only a few months before. But look at him.
He’s had the perfect upbringing in terms of who he’s learned from, where he’s played and the cultures he’s been immersed in at different clubs across the world. It may not have worked out at Nice, but sometimes you have to look deeper at things like that.
Just because you’ve played at the top level and played under some top managers doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be a success as a manager of course. Far from it, in fact. But it can help. Vieira has always displayed a real understanding of the game. I played against him for many years when he was at Arsenal, and you could see the way he controlled the midfield he was an astute tactical player.
Few people know this, but in the 2001 FA Cup final, I used a bit of ‘astute’ play of my own to get us back in the game. It wasn’t spotted, but I blocked Vieira off as he went to close the ball down, and that allowed Michael Owen to score the equaliser.
I call that an assist - Patrick no doubt calls it a foul! It was one of the few times anyone got the better of him in those days. He was probably the most powerful midfielder around at that time, and was some opponent.
It’s interesting to see how that’s translated into management. I like the approach he has brought to Palace, which has vindicated his appointment. As I said, their owners could have stayed safe with Roy Hodgson, or gone for a safer option in a manager who’s done it all before.
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But they decided they wanted a different style, a team with more about them... and that is what Vieira has brought. They play more football for sure, keep possession much better, and can compete against the better teams.
Which is why they have a chance against Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final. Obviously they are underdogs, but we’ve seen against City this season they can beat the top sides. Their game at the Etihad was one of THE performances of the season so far. I think Patrick picked up a lot at City. You can see he wants that technical element in his side’s style of play, and he will have learned a lot from his time there, and his connections there when he was in New York.
Palace have been a bit inconsistent this season, but that is only natural for a team that is still coming together. The important thing is, they have a platform to go further, which wasn’t always the case in the past. It is reward for their owners in backing Patrick. They’ve done that in choosing him to be manager, and also done it in the transfer market, with a lot of signings. If he can deliver an FA Cup final, then he will have already repaid a large chunk of the faith they’ve shown in him.
