Two Premier League managers lost their jobs on Thursday morning, and the second axe fell in south London. Crystal Palace have sacked Pierre Sage after less than five months in charge, with the club bottom of the table and sinking fast.
Reuters reported the decision on Thursday, quoting the club statement: "Crystal Palace Football Club can confirm that Pierre Sage has left his role as manager." Three members of his coaching staff — Jamal Alioui, Damien Della Santa and Sandy Guichard — have also left, and Palace say an update on appointing a successor will come "in due course".
How a season unravelled in five months
The numbers left Steve Parish with nowhere else to go. Palace sit bottom of the Premier League with seven points from 10 matches — just two wins and a draw — and own the division's worst defensive record, with 24 goals conceded. Sunday's 3-1 home defeat by Liverpool was a fourth straight league loss and, as TNT Sports put it, the final straw — even though Palace produced perhaps their best half of football under Sage in the opening 45 minutes before Liverpool pulled away.
Europe offered no shelter either. Palace are 21st in the Europa League league phase after winning only one of their first four matches, and a run to the Carabao Cup quarter-finals was not enough to save him. This was not how it was meant to go: Sage arrived last summer on a three-year contract to replace Oliver Glasner, fresh from being named Ligue 1's manager of the season after guiding Lens to second place, with a reputation built at Lyon and Lens as one of France's brightest coaches.
The hand Sage was dealt
Context is not an excuse, but Sage had plenty of it. Palace sold star centre-back Maxence Lacroix to Chelsea in the summer, while experienced right-back Daniel Munoz followed Glasner to Nottingham Forest. Worse, the two forwards the whole attack runs through — Senegal star Ismaila Sarr and Jean-Philippe Mateta — have both missed large parts of the season through injury. A bottom-of-the-table side that cannot defend, stripped of its best defender and robbed of its goals, is a job description very few coaches in Europe would have survived.
What happens next at Selhurst Park
Palace now have the international break to find their next manager, and the names are already circulating. Thomas Frank — who bookmakers make the leading candidate — and Kieran McKenna have both been linked with the job, and whoever takes it walks straight into an away game at Coventry City on November 21 with the club needing points immediately. Parish has moved this quickly before: Frank de Boer lasted just four league matches in 2017-18. The new man will also pray Sarr and Mateta return fit, because Palace's survival will be decided by their goals far more than by anything drawn on a tactics board.
Beyond the Final Whistle: Palace have not sacked a bad coach — they have sacked a timeline. Sage was hired as a project and judged as a firefighter, by a club that sold his best defender, lost his forwards and then blamed the man in the dugout for the arithmetic. The next appointment has to be a relegation specialist, not another idea. Was Sage the problem at Palace, or did the club set him up to fail? Tell us in the comments.
