Something had to change

Ever since Crystal Palace made it into the Premier League, I've followed their fortunes.  They've had a couple of good years.  More recently, they've been performing relegation escapes.  Last year was remarkable when they dropped manager Alan Pardew, brought on Sam Allardyce, and managed a couple of fantastic upsets to stay out of relegation.

But being a lower-level Premier League team, they didn't get a lot of help via transfers, and surprisingly, Allardyce politely quite as manager.  So they hired Frank de Boer, who hadn't lasted long at his last posting.

After a no-goal, 0-4 start (even though they really outplayed Burnley last Sunday), something had to change, and what could be changed was the manager.  So de Boer was out, and Roy Hodgson, who has managed a lot of teams successfully, though his recent English national team stint didn't go particularly well, was picked.  Despite that disappointment (no one could have expected what Iceland was going to do, anyway), he's a great coach.  Plus, he's a former player, and even played for the Palace youth team.

Will it make a difference?  Well, if coaching can make a difference, then they couldn't do much better right now than Hodgson.

Not everybody's impressed.

But a player who played for him seems to think it will work:

Roy Hodgson has been written off before... but he will turn it around as Crystal Palace's new manager

Next step - score a goal.