Opinion: Assessing where Daichi Kamada will fit under Oliver Glasner – with Crystal Palace looking to wrap up deal for Lazio midfielder

BY ALEX PEWTER

Crystal Palace look to be closing in on a deal for Lazio’s Daichi Kamada – with the Japanese midfielder trading one capital city for another – but what does his anticipated arrival mean for the rest of the squad?

The tactical switch to a 3-4-2-1 under Oliver Glasner has forced the club to rebalance the squad, and acquiring an attacking midfielder to bolster a vital component of the formation has been a high and logical priority.

The team shifting away from the traditional wingers the fans have been used to in a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 has condensed the attacking talents into only two attacking midfield spots behind the centre forward, to varying success.

Of course, the old setup had drawbacks, even when Ebere Eze was at the heart of the attack. His team-carrying performances at the start of the season, as the lone number 10, saw some teams able to mark him out of matches, sometimes forcing Roy Hodgson to move him out wide to get touches on the ball. The Glasner strategy with two such players in that area and with the width from the wing backs allows those number 10s to work in the channels and, ultimately, get open.

The club will undoubtedly have the ambition to retain Eze and Michael Olise into the 2024-25 season. Given their contract lengths and end-of-season performances, it would be down to any suitor to meet any release clauses to pry them away from South London.

Assuming both stay, the drop off from their talent levels to those in reserve is sizeable, at least in an attacking sense. That is clearly where a player such as Kamada would help fill the void: a player with a proven track record under the current head coach who is well-suited for the role.

There may be an adjustment period for Palace fans, who need to get used to having the strength in depth to have such players possibly sit on the bench. Still, it is necessary if the team wishes to maintain performance levels throughout matches, congested runs of fixtures, and, of course, injuries.

Although with all arrivals, departures often follow. Should Palace acquire a further attacking midfielder, that would leave the club nominally with six players to battle for two spots. Beyond the two starters, the team and sporting director Dougie Freedman invested a lot of money and faith in the future of Matheus Franca. That leaves both Jeffrey Schlupp and Jordan Ayew very much on the fringes.

Schlupp, one of the club’s utility players, offers backup for other positions in the lineup and, at this stage of his career, may be satisfied with a rotational or backup role. However, Ayew appeared to be ill-fitted for this new number 10 role compared to his success this season out wide. Moreover, the end of the season was one of his first spells as a substitute for a couple of years.

If this summer has seen a proactive start in terms of potential incoming players, the team likely needs a similar emphasis in the opposite direction. As a team that has often let too many players leave at the end of contacts for nothing, it is time they started to balance the books, even if that means losing some long-standing players.