Welcome back to the Party at the Palace. If you haven't caught any of the previous posts, you can start from the beginning here.
Right, let's get to the start of the new episode.
After the late season joys of winning the League Cup. We had to plot our debut season in European competition.
We would need to bolster the ranks as we will be fighting on 4 fronts for the first time, something I am sure will be a real strain on a squad.
Let first catch up with the off the field developments.
Expectations
The fact that the Board feel we can compete for the Europa Conference League in our debut season shows the standing that particular competition currently has.
Let's hope we can give it a good go!
Supporter Profile Update
An increase in Fair weather and Casual fans this season but the Season Ticket waiting list increased by another 7000 people.
We need a real improvement in the finances to get the board onside for them to be interested in improving the stadium.
Transfer Activity
With success last season there were plenty of clubs snooping around the squad looking to poach a few to aid their own causes.
So, with that in mind let's look at the outgoing players.
Immediately you'll see in the top left corner that these sales raised a whopping £99 million.
Then when you look closer, you'll see we've seen some real first teamers depart.
Mateta, Livramento and Livakovic all being mainstays in the first team last season. Matetea and Livramento had their heads turned with the chance of Champions League football.
I decided to cash in on Livakovic with the rise of our young goalkeepers Seimen and Carter, they need to be getting regular first team football for them to progress.
Ekkelenkamp and Khedira were slipping further down the pecking order and with decent offers coming in I couldnt refuse.
Now for the incoming players.
With almost £100 million coming into the club, we had a pretty reserved window.
The Key transfer was Marcos Leonardo from Santos for £18 million. He looks every bit a Premier League striker and at 22 he has plenty of scope to improve. He will be our new first choice striker.
Callum Wilson will offer some cover after being released from Newcastle and we welcome two loan signings as Neco Williams comes in from Forest and Willock from Newcastle.
Williams will offer an alternative at Right Wing Back and Willock will offer cover and depth out wide on the left and through the middle in the park.
Another player signed at the back end of last season is French youth prospect Lucas Chambon from Toulouse. Capable of playing most roles in the centre of the park has huge potential. Signed for £9 million and already worth £52 million. Could be able to turn a tidy profit also.
We also welcome Roony Bardghji for his first season with the club after his signing last season and loan back to Copenhagen.
So we finish the transfer window almost £80 million pounds in profit.
Pre-Season
Its a shorter pre season than we have previously had due to our qualifying phases of the Europa League. But an unbeaten run that got the juices flowing after the summer break.
August 2025
We start both our Europa Conference league and Premier League campaign in August meaning we are looking at a truly hectic schedule.
We start in the "League Path Third qualifying Round" with another qualifying round after that until we make it into the competition proper.
There will be some rotation here as these are definitely teams we should be beating.
Well, that was as straight forward as possible, we advance into the League stage of the competition.
Hopefully that will set us on the way to a good start to the Premier League season.
Not the start we are looking for! Three straight defeats in the league to start the season off and the worst possible start.
Maybe the extra games, squad swapping and travel have taken more out of the team than expected. A learning curve in for sure.
September 2025
With Augusts league as poor as it was, I was keen to ensure we had a much better September. Annoyingly, we faced 3 of the top 6 teams in the country in Man Utd, Newcastle and Spurs.
Getting anything from this month will be a test.
We start the season 0-0-6 as we lose 6 League games in a row. It's a bleak opening set of games but notably a tough run.
We had the draw for our 6 games in the Europa Conference League group stage where the top 8 with automatically qualify for the Round of 16.
A favourable draw with only Sporting and Viktoria Plzen having any European pedigree.
October 2025
We have got a real opportunity go get our season back on track as we face Southampton, Everton and rivals Millwall. Need to get some points on the board.
We do exactly that, we steal all three points against Southampton thanks to an 88th min Bardghji goal, his first in the Premier League.
Leonardo then finally got on the scoresheet in the Premier league grabbing 2 second half goals away at Everton.
We then put in a poor performance in a 2-4 defeat at home to London rivals, Millwall.
Now we move onto our first two games in the League Phase of the Europa League, and we face our toughest opponents yet in Portuguese giants Sporting.
Here are some results we like to see! A brilliant performance against Sporting to grab a deserved win.
We rotated to the 2nd string to put away Slovenian minnows Koper with ease. A perfect start.
November 2025
With the horror show of the first two months of the season seemingly behind us we go into a busy November with some confidence and belief we can start climbing up the league to where we feel we belong.
Suddenly we look like a half decent side. We dispatched Fulham away from comfortably before shocking EVERYONE with a 4-0 home victory over Man City.
It was the complete second half performance seeing us score all 4-0 goals after half time. An away loss to Leicester followed but we bounced back immediately with a romping 5-2 victory over Bournemouth.
The home fans really got their monies worth this month with no fewer than 9 goals scored by us at Selhurst Park.
We move onto the Europa Conference League fixtures during November as we face a long away trip to Azerbaijan.
Our perfect start continues. 6 points, no goals conceded and plenty of rotation of youth players to ease the strain on the squad.
December 2025
This December is a BUSY ONE. With 5 Premier League games and 2 European games. The PL games are not the easiest either with away trips to Liverpool and Arsenal.
But we are in decent form so let's see if we can keep this run going.
Ok so we lost the games I expected to lose. Healthy wins against Villa and Wolves put a better spin in the month and an away point at Brentford is never to be sniffed at.
Shout out to Leonardo as he grabs 7 goals in 5 games and is really starting to show the quality we need from out striker.
We finish the month with our last 2 games in the League Phase of the Europa Conference League.
6/6 for the league phase. More goals for Leonardo as we see off Viktoria Plzen. A pretty straight forward qualification out of this phase.
Halfway Table
Considering how we started this season sitting in 13th after 18 games is a fantastic come back. Can we push on and sneak into some sort of fight for Europe.
Youth Intake Preview
Not a bad youth intake, hopefully some real promise in there.
As always thanks for reading and we will be back soon with the conclusion to Season 4.
Cheers
Panda
