Oliver Glasner embarrasses himself with ‘arrogant’ and ‘you don’t need a manager’ comments in defeat | OneFootball

It is easy to feel sympathy for managers whose every public utterance is scrutinised with a fine-tooth comb, analysed beyond all meaning and often dredged up for some stick-beating indulgence weeks or even months later.

But when Oliver Glasner discussed “the responsibility you have” as FA Cup holders against a sixth-tier semi-professional side to “show your standards” and prove that glorious victory at Wembley in May “was no gift, it was no coincidence,” he would have known the potential for some particularly awkward egg-based face-covering.

“[If you] drop your standards or you are playing arrogant, then you get punished, and then you deserve to get punished, if you think, ‘we are the big ones and we don’t respect them,'” he said before his trip to Moss Rose.

And so the inquest begins into which of his players Glasner does not know as well as he thought, with Crystal Palace the first FA Cup holders eliminated by a non-league team since 1909.

Macclesfield, ensconced in the National League North’s mid-table, beat them, humbled them, punished them. And they fully deserved to spring perhaps the biggest shock in FA Cup history.

Falling victim to that is not a role Palace especially suit, bur nor has been their status as European competition favourites, trophy challengers, Premier League upstarts and, in far more games than they are accustomed to, giants waiting to be killed by virtue of having more possession than they are comfortable with.

It is to Macclesfield’s credit that they were ruthless and clinical enough to pull the trigger. It is to Palace’s eternal shame and embarrassment that by their own manager’s words they were “arrogant” enough to forever be one of the worst champions in the history of the sport’s oldest knockout tournament.

This is their ninth game without a win in the FA Cup, Carabao Cup, Premier League and Conference League. If this is Glasner placing himself in the shop window with his contract expiring at the end of the season, that is a level of plate-spinning which will not appeal to the sort of clientele he is being linked with.

And it might no longer appeal to even Palace themselves, who will eventually grow tired of being told how they are punching in a relationship which does not seem to be serving any of the parties involved any more.

More frustrating for them is that Glasner’s reaction can be fairly accurately predicted: that he warned them they needed to invest, to push on, to take advantage of a unique situation and position in their history. And that they didn’t listen, instead looking a gift horse in the mouth with one eye while staring daggers at Evangelos Marinakis with the other at their crucial summer crossroads.

The Austrian has had a point every time he has brought it up, but only so often can he fall back on a lack of depth or reliable options in his squad as an instinctive response to each setback. And it would not feel particularly appropriate after losing to a team 117 league places below them.

Glasner had “no explanation” when asked after the game for what had happened, adding that “you don’t need tactics, you don’t need a manager in these type of games” in a dreadful attempt at washing his hands of this debacle.

Palace, by his own admission, were “arrogant” enough to turn up with neither and it showed. They certainly “don’t need a manager” if this is how their current one is going to be.