Oliver Glasner explains backroom staff additions and the importance of keeping Paddy McCarthy and Dean Kiely

BY ANDREW MCSTEEN

Oliver Glasner has explained the role of his new backroom staff at Crystal Palace and has stressed the importance of keeping hold of Paddy McCarthy and Dean Kiely.

After being officially announced as Roy Hodgson’s replacement on Monday, the Austrian wasted no time announcing his backroom team, consisting of four assistant coaches, a goalkeeping coach, and a fitness coach.

New arrivals Ronald Brunmayr, Michael Angerschmid and former Middlesbrough and West Ham United defender Emanuel Pogatetz, along with former Eagles caretaker boss and first-team coach Paddy McCarthy form the quartet of assistants, joined by Michael Berktold as fitness and conditioning coach.

“It is very important for us that Paddy (McCarthy) stayed because he knows the players better than we all do, and he also has a great experience here with Crystal Palace – he worked before at the academy, and he’s a great guy,” said the 49-year-old.

“Dean (Kiely), he’s also good for us. He has helped us a lot [with] what has happened until now. We were all convinced that we need the experience of the guys who were already here.”

Dean Kiely completed Glasner’s six-man team, concentrating again on his role as goalkeeping coach after Hodgson had put him in charge of set-pieces – but the roles are not rigid, according to the Austrian.

“We prepared for set-pieces and he was sitting with us and talking to us about his experience,” he added.

“For me, it’s not [pointing at someone and] saying ‘you are responsible for set-pieces’ and ‘you are not allowed to say something about it’. We were all sitting here and discussing for several hours about the whole situation – everybody can have a good impact and then I take a decision.”

Glasner, who previously managed LASK in Austria and VfL Wolfsburg and Eintracht Frankfurt in Germany, will hope the mixture of familiar faces and trusted staff can be enough to help him pull the club out of the slump which sees them just five points outside of the relegation positions with just one win in their five Premier League games this year and just six all season.

“We [also] need the experience of the guys who worked with me together [previously] and that we have the best situation to connect this. We’ve not had the time to say ‘oh we have six weeks pre-season that’s see how it works’,” said Glasner about fusing together McCarthy and Kiely to his existing coaching set-up with just 13 games of the season remaining.

“With the guys who came from Austria, with Emanuel Pogatetz, I was looking for an assistant who has experience with the Premier League – he played here for six or seven years.

“Plus, the [aspect of] player thinking is important. You have players in Austria [who] maybe have a different mentality than the players in Germany and [then] the players here in England, so there are some specific topics. He also has this experience and he’s a coach, and he’s also a very great and direct guy.

“The fitness coach (Berktold) I have worked with him for almost six years in Linz and then in Wolfsburg, and he left Wolfsburg because of his family situation, there was covid at that time and it was difficult and he asked me ‘please I would like to go back to my family in Austria in this difficult covid situation’, he then left us but we always were in touch.

“It’s also important [because] we want to increase the intensity of playing, the intensity of training, but we have to monitor it because we cannot afford to have more injuries than we have [already] so I wanted to have a guy who’s experienced with the way of training and is used to doing it.

“Michael and Ronald were with me in Frankfurt, and they are responsible for set pieces and set plays. Ronald was a former striker, the golden boot winner in Austria, so he will work with our strikers, how they can move in the box, how they can improve their finishing.”