ANALYSIS Hodgson vs Vieira: What is the new Crystal Palace boss doing differently?

The Eagles have won three on the trot since the experienced boss’ return to Selhurst Park, and that immediate impact exacerbates the erstwhile head coach’s struggles.

It would be no easy task finding anyone who had no opinion on Crystal Palace’s decision to jettison Patrick Viera and bring Roy Hodgson back in March.

There was no consensus. Many felt the former Arsenal midfielder was harshly treated 20 months into what was meant to be a three-year contract. Others believed a winless start to 2023 and a glut of listless performances for most of that 11-game league run justified the club’s decision.

Vieira’s team went three successive games without recording a shot on target, were looking down rather than up despite sitting two places below mid-table and there was a genuine threat of relegation.

Observers who thought the departed manager’s sacking was cruel believed the return of Hodgson to the club he managed for four years before leaving in 2021 indicated the South London club had panicked.

The intention was to move away from the Englishman’s approach, which promised Premier League survival but had seemingly plateaued, and build around a core of younger players with room to improve.

Letting go of Vieira for the short-term return of Hodgson showed Palace were only interested in the short-term — avoiding Premier League relegation.

Why was Vieira sacked?

While the broader reason was the team’s wretched results in 2023, a winless run that made Palace the only club across the major divisions in English football not to have picked up maximum points in the first three months of the New Year, the threat of relegation loomed large.

Even though they were 12th in the standings, they sat three points clear of 18th place and five ahead of cellar-dwelling Southampton. Panicking was probably expected for a club without a win since that 2-0 triumph over Bournemouth on December 31, 2022.

In a sense, there is disappointment at how it all unravelled for Vieira at Palace. After guiding the club through a complicated transition in his first year in charge, the Eagles’ on-field approach failed to evolve in year two.

The World Cup winner had the task of altering the team’s counter-attacking style for a more offensive approach, and there was progress in 2021-22.

Apart from the increase in average possession in Vieira’s first year — 51.2% from 40.2% — was the rise in the creation of quality chances — 61 big chances in 21-22 vs 46 in 2020-21 — and a first visit to Wembley in the FA Cup since 2016, where they exited in the semi-final against Chelsea.

“It’s amazing,” Wilfried Zaha said after a 4-0 cup thrashing of Everton in March 2022. “It’s crazy that it is the first year the team have played together, but you can see the progress already. Over time, when the team gels together more, there is even more to come.

“This shows what direction the club are going in. The players we have brought in, how we play; it just shows what we have got for the future, so the club is going in a good direction.”

A year later, Vieira is no longer in situ at the club, with the football getting turgid in his final months in charge. The green shoots of identity initially seen under the Frenchman were no longer visible.

However, was the erstwhile Juventus man always fighting a losing battle in South London? He was considered an outsider to replace Hodgson, with Nuno Espirito Santo tipped to replace the experienced Englishman and Lucien Favre in the conversation.

Nuno eventually moved to Tottenham Hotspur, and Favre made a dramatic U-turn during negotiations. Was Vieira’s standing as an alternative always a portend for his Palace tenure?

Has this happened to Vieira before?

Unfortunately, yes. There were familiar failings for Vieira in his previous job with Ligue 1 side Nice.

The Frenchman guided the club to a seventh-place finish in his first year with the Eaglets before following that up with fifth in a curtailed 2019-20 season. 

However, there were doubts about the Frenchman’s general approach, as it seemed he could not create a coherent attack like his predecessor Favre, even if there was a stark improvement defensively.

Except there was mitigation for both, especially Nice’s defensive record under Vieira. There was a feeling Walter Benitez’s heroics between the sticks, not a superb defensive structure, was responsible for the reduction in goals conceded.

Advanced numbers provided by FBref reveal that the goalkeeper prevented 12 goals in 18-19 and seven goals in 19-20 based on the quality of shots faced, figures which saw him outrank all but one goalkeeper in Ligue 1 in those two campaigns.

Although, the paltry attacking return in Vieira’s first year was perhaps an upshot of the sale of Alassane Plea in the summer of 2018 and Mario Balotelli in January 2019. Both players contributed 75 percent of Nice’s goals in the 2017-18 season.

Losing Jean Michael Seri’s midfield influence was equally disruptive to Vieira.

However, despite the financial backing received after INEOS Group Limited’s takeover a year into the Frenchman’s reign in 2019, the absence of a recognised philosophy, the tendency to approach games overly defensively — which also became the norm in Vieira’s last months at Palace — and a month-long five-game losing run sealed the World Cup winner’s fate in December 2020.

What has changed under Hodgson?

The shackles have been removed under Hodgson, with the attacking talent strutting their stuff under the experienced manager not renowned for allowing attacking expression.

Palace not only won their first match of 2023 in a dramatic late 2-1 success over Leicester City but have gone on to win two more games since that victory over the Foxes, annihilating Leeds United 5-1 and defeating Southampton 2-0.

They managed a staggering 31 shots against the relegation-threatened Leicester, extraordinarily outdoing their previous four games combined.

The talented Eberechi Eze is back in favour, having started three of Vieira’s final 10 league games as the Frenchman switched to a 4-2-3-1 to offer more protection.

He scored both in last week’s victory over Southampton, netted one in the hammering of Leeds and was involved in a season-high 10 shot-creating actions against Leicester.

Palace have already accumulated Expected Goals (xG) of 2.3 and 3.0 in two of their three league games under Hodgson. For context, this outdoes all but one game in 2022-23, a 3-1 win over Aston Villa in August 2022, where the Eagles accumulated xG of 2.6.

Vieira had to navigate a challenging run of fixtures against teams of superior technical quality, while they were seconds away from maximum points against Brentford and inches away from going 1-0 up in the goalless encounter with Liverpool in February.

Hodgson taking charge of his old side through the easier run-in should result in safety at the season’s conclusion, with the run of games till the end of the campaign understandably mentioned when defending the Frenchman.

Unfortunately, we will never know if Vieira would have secured nine points from nine, but Palace acted (some might say panicked) with their Premier League status on the line.

Despite offering early potential, Vieira’s promise of exciting football at Selhurst fizzled out quickly.