Palace’s top scorer in pre-season was Jean-Philippe Mateta, the Frenchman having opened the scoring in each of his last three appearances (against Crawley, Mainz 05 and FC Augsburg), totalling four goals and an assist to boot.
Glasner believes Mateta is primed to his last two productive seasons (when he scored 19 and 17 goals in all competitions respectively), explaining how the forward will have the opportunity to start 2025/26 differently this year.
“JP had a difficult start to last season because of the Olympics tournament,” Glasner noted. “He was away pre-season, then also emotionally, having the Olympic Games in your country, then losing the final… then it took him a few weeks to be ready again.
“From that moment, he came back and started to score again. In pre-season, he's our top scorer, he’s getting assists as well, he knows exactly how we want to play it, and he knows if he invests so much in what he's doing in every single game, he will get the chances and he will score the goals – so I’m very positive that he will continue scoring goals for us.”