Oliver Glasner has already shared his frustration at a lack of progress in the transfer market amid doubts over his future at Selhurst Park
The defeat at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is one of the worst in Crystal Palace’s history.
Forget cup final losses, or derby defeats, or severe thrashings. The decision by CAS to dismiss the club’s appeal against being demoted to the Conference League has denied them the right, earned from winning the FA Cup in one of last season’s feel-good storylines, to invest the potential future earnings in transfers and contract renewals that could help secure the club’s place those few rungs up the ladder.
You only have to look at the difference in prize pools between the Europa League and the Conference League for an idea of the impact: £489m compared to £247m.
Clearly, it is hard to quantify quite how far Palace would have gone in the competition, but the difference between winning the Europa League – worth £28m – and the Conference League – worth £16m – is stark.
And this does not include additional revenues from sponsorship, commercial opportunities and ticket sales. Nor the invisible benefit of attracting that slightly higher calibre of player to Selhurst Park for the seasons ahead.
Glasner’s contract expires in the summer of 2026 (Photo: Getty)
It may all be small change for clubs such as Manchester United, Liverpool or Manchester City, but for a club at the level of Crystal Palace, constantly trying to find an edge, to identify undervalued talent and fend off richer rivals, it means everything.
Palace have already had a summer operating under a cloud of uncertainty, unsure of how much they have to spend on players, or how high they can go in contract negotiations. Now they have been left with three weeks to salvage what they have left, three weeks after winning a first major trophy in the club’s history, doing deals in their worst-case-scenario predictions and future-planning models.
Transfer and wage budgets will be redrawn. Zeros will be removed from columns on spreadsheets. Totals will be downgraded.
That new contract offer for Marc Guehi, whose current deal expires next season? It will not be as lucrative as had they qualified for the Europa League.
And for it to be so, there will have to be other concessions. Star players, who they could otherwise have kept, might have to be sold. Eberechi Eze is of interest to Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.
Clubs interested in Guehi, including Newcastle and Liverpool, will know Palace’s hand is weaker than it was before the CAS ruling was announced on Monday morning. Clubs interested in Eze will feel that bit more confident testing Palace’s nerve with lower bids.
Oliver Glasner has already shared his frustration at a lack of progress in the transfer market and hinted that he won’t stay if it does not improve. The prospect of Palace losing the manager who made history 12 weeks ago edges closer.
And so the CAS ruling leaves Palace with nowhere to go and that bit more vulnerable to being picked apart and dismantled until they are well and truly put back in the place the game now makes them feel they belong.
Palace lawyers tried their best to argue the club’s case. But CAS dismissed each argument: that John Textor didn’t have significant influence over Palace due to sharing voting rights with three other minority shareholder; that Palace received unfair treatment compared to Nottingham Forest, handed their Europa League place, and Lyon, who Textor also owned; that Uefa’s rules were not clear and provided flexibility for other clubs.
Three devastating sentences in CAS’s short statement confirming the verdict, posted on its website, delivering the devastating blows that confirmed Palace’s arguments had been utterly dismissed by three independent lawyers.
At a private hearing at CAS headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, last Friday, Palace lawyers pointed out that Manchester United and Manchester City were permitted to play in the same competition as respective sister clubs Nice and Girona after owners were forced to place shares in a blind trust.
On paper, it means that an individual does not have influence over both clubs. Back in the real world, who thinks billionaires aren’t simply on the phone to directors and executives at the club they have “rescinded” influence over, having influence a signed document suggests they no longer possess?
You can point to missed deadlines, missteps and mistakes.
But at its essence, this was always about a smaller club being given harsher treatment than far bigger, wealthier sides. About well-established Premier League clubs becoming the plaything of billionaires.
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It is a blow for any club punching upwards, every club fighting that seemingly impossible fight to climb towards the top of the pyramid.
CAS laid the blame firmly at the door of Textor, who failed to place his majority ownership of Palace or Lyon in a blind trust by the 1 March deadline.
Where is Textor in all this? Since gone, selling up his stake to Woody Johnson after growing tired of it all. Instead, it is left to Palace fans to bear the brunt of the decision, and wondering how it ever came to this.