Oliver Glasner has said Crystal Palace should have recruited better in the summer.
The Eagles lost key players such as Jordan Ayew, Joachim Andersen and Sam Johnstone, as well as Michael Olise, who joined Bayern Munich for £50.8million.
Helped by Olise’s fee, Palace ended up pocketing a net transfer window profit, signing Trevoh Chalobah and Matt Turner on loan, Daichi Kamada on a free transfer, and forking out a total of £65m on Chadi Riad, Maxence Lacroix, Eddie Nketiah and Ismaila Sarr.
But Glasner’s side are still winless in the Premier League and currently sit in the relegation zone ahead of Sunday’s home match against in-form Tottenham.
The Austrian was asked whether he feels that the high transfer spending of other Premier League clubs has made it more difficult to kick on this term.
Glasner said: “We were 10th last season and now to improve? Read the table. Ninth I think was West Ham who invested £140m net, eighth was Manchester United and seventh was Newcastle.
“So to improve we have to overtake one of them and when we look back, Fulham was 13th or something, investing £50m net and Brighton were 11th investing £180m net. These are the surroundings of us, we saved £20m net.”
Asked whether he feels disappointed by Palace’s summer business, Glasner replied: “It’s not a public discussion. I’ve already mentioned it several times before: we could have done better in the transfer window.
“With four signings on deadline day, it’s not how you wished a transfer window would work. No one says: ‘Yes, we will wait until deadline day and then sign four players two weeks after the Premier League has started and without [the signings having] any pre-season.’
“This is clearly what we should have done better. But in the end it was the club’s decision. We all expected a lot from this season. It hurts; maybe we lost a sense of realism.”
Glasner added: “For me, it’s always difficult to switch off, because we had six weeks off in summer after a great end to the season, and I think I spoke to my sporting director every day, sometimes two or three times. A manager is not leaving their office and done. Sometimes at ten in the evening, they drop a message to me. It’s always a 24/7 job.”
Palace continue to weigh up whether Adam Wharton will undergo groin surgery for an underlying injury.
Glasner refused to speculate on his recovery time if he did have surgery, saying: “I am not a surgeon — I don't know how long it takes. We have tried to find out whether it is really necessary; at the moment we would say [it is].”
Meanwhile, Glasner believes winger Matheus Franca will not play again for Palace until 2025.
The 20-year-old has made just 10 Premier League appearances in an injury-hampered 14 months since last summer’s £19m move from Flamengo. He is currently sidelined with a groin adductor injury.
“He is too far away,” Glasner admitted. “I don’t think that he will play many games or even one game in 2024 for us. We expected Matheus Franca to be back within two to three months and he's still out.”
