Oliver Glasner lays out Crystal Palace ambition to build on FA Cup success – ‘We want to achieve big things and win trophies’

Hodgson was a steady hand on the tiller in his first term as Palace boss between 2017 and 2021, as the club aimed to maintain their Premier League status while investing in infrastructure behind the scenes. However, his return in 2023 was marked by relegation concerns, fan protests and a bruising 4-1 loss to rivals Brighton & Hove Albion.

Indeed, Glasner, a UEFA Europa League winning manager with Eintracht Frankfurt, arrived at a club suffering from inertia on the pitch and frustration in the stands. Within 15 months, he had taken The Eagles to their first ever major trophy.

Palace’s modern history has been shaped by near-misses on the biggest stage, including FA Cup final defeats to Manchester United in 1990 and 2016. But a 1-0 FA Cup triumph over Manchester City, followed by a Community Shield penalty shoot-out victory against Liverpool, has given the club a taste for success.

“I would say it is an exciting journey,” Glasner told TNT Sports. “It was a challenging journey, that’s what I was looking for when I signed for Palace.

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“Now, of course, many things are more familiar, you know each other much better – the players, all the employees, the environment, the staff, we all want the same thing. We all want to be successful, we all want to achieve big things and win trophies.”

Glasner’s time at the club has not been seamless. Palace have lost star players Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze in successive summers, endured an eight-game winless run at the start of the 2024/25 campaign and were demoted from the Europa League to the UEFA Conference League in August due to a breach in multi-club ownership rules.

“Sometimes you have conflict,” Glasner conceded. “But then you have to solve it, and to solve a conflict you have to talk to each other, you have to know each other, you have to make a step towards the other person, and sometimes they have to make a step towards you, and then you can solve problems.

“You always have challenges. With a group of 30 players and a staff of 40 people, you have challenges, you have conflict and, therefore, you need good communication. You have to know each other – how someone reacts.

“For me, the first thing is always listening, then asking, and then talking. In German we say, ‘The person that is asking is leading, not the person that is talking’.”

The FA Cup final

Palace won the FA Cup conceding one goal throughout the entire competition, in a 3-1 victory against Millwall in the fifth round.

The club’s performances were marked by a sense of purpose, with Glasner revealing he had put up a printed-out picture of the FA Cup trophy in the dressing room from their fourth-round encounter with Doncaster Rovers.

Glasner said: “If you see something, it stays in your mind. If you tell someone something, maybe they will forget, but if you see something – a photo, a picture – (you remember it).

“Many of our memories are saved in pictures. I said let’s print a big sheet of paper with the FA Cup so the players know what we are playing for, and if it helped us gain more belief by 1%, it was worth it.

“On the other hand, you could say, ‘What happens if every single team has a trophy in the dressing room? Who wins it in the end?’”

After dispatching Premier League rivals Fulham and Aston Villa in the quarter and semi-finals, respectively, an attritional, backs-to-the-wall performance against City in the final saw the club claim a 1-0 victory, courtesy of a first-half Eze strike.

“For me, a final is the same game,” Glasner continued. “Sometimes you think it’s a bigger game and the environment is bigger but it’s the same game.

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“We don’t have to change anything. We won 3-0 in the semi-final against Aston Villa, we won 3-0 at Fulham.

“Of course, we lost 5-2 against City a few weeks before (the final). We changed the set-up a little bit and then thought, ‘We always know that we can create chances, we always know that we can score goals’.
“The message is always the same, every single game. We prepare the team, tell them they have to believe and then give them the confidence that we can win this game.

“In life you have no chance to achieve anything if you don’t believe in it. You have to do it, and therefore you need the belief that you can achieve it.”

How to watch Macclesfield v Crystal Palace

FA Cup holders Crystal Palace will get the defence of their crown underway against Macclesfield at the Moss Rose on Saturday, January 10.

The match will get underway at 12:15, with coverage starting from 11:30 on TNT Sports 1.