Crystal Palace 23/24 Fantasy Flashback

Draft Society
Jul 14, 2024
6 min read

Before we look ahead to this season's prospects, let's first digest some takeaways from Crystal palace’ most recent season in our 23/24 Fantasy Flashback series. In this year's 24/25 Draft Kit, we are featuring both a Fantasy Flashback and a Fantasy Forecast for every single Premier League team. The flashbacks will be available on Draft Kit launch day, while the forecasts will drop closer to draft day. Check the 24/25 Draft Kit main page often, as it's updated constantly!

In addition to reviewing top Draft PL fantasy contributors, Crystal Palace’s Fantasy Flashback will highlight a breakout player and a fantasy flop, analyze the impact of any injuries suffered by Palace players, and review the team's performance as a whole. Then, be sure to check out the Crystal Palace 24/25 Fantasy Forecast to find out whether last season was a fluke or if we predict more of the same.

Check out our 24/25 Draft Kit for all the pre-season information you could ever need: Draft Rankings, Team Previews, Mock Drafts, Strategy, Draft 101. We've got it all!

Crystal Palace 23/24 Fantasy Flashback

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23/24 Player Performance

Injury Impact

Overall Team Performance

23/24 Crystal Palace Player Performance

Let's review how Palace’s players fared in 23/24, with an emphasis on their Draft Premier League fantasy assets. We'll also discuss any pertinent info regarding rotation, managerial tactics, and injuries below. What can we learn from their performance in the last campaign?

Note: The following table is interactive. Desktop users can apply the Filter, Group, and Sort buttons to arrange the data to their preferences. Mobile users can tap on a player card to view all data points. The table can be reset to its default state by refreshing the page.

It’s important that we look at Palace’s 23/24 campaign as essentially two seasons crammed into one. Until February, we were stuck with Roy Hodgson’s safe and pragmatic approach to football. Obviously, this isn’t normally a recipe for fantasy points. But then, seemingly overnight, Palace ended the season as the most in-form team in the Premier League under Oliver Glasner, terrorizing the likes of Liverpool, Aston Villa, West Ham, Newcastle, and Manchester United in April and May. We’ll discuss this turnaround more later in this flashback article. But, given that we’ll be treated to another year of Glasner Ball, let’s focus on the period from February to May.

Below, we’ve displayed a simple comparison for Palace’s best performing players in fantasy points per game under Hodgson vs. under Glasner. The numbers speak for themselves. Glasner’s front-footed style of play has breathed new life into this team.

	PPG Under Hodgson	PPG Under Glasner
Eze	13.6	17.1
Olise	16.5	15.6
Mateta	6.2	15.2
Munoz	N/A	11.0
Mitchell	3.59	7.98
Andersen	7.29	7.75

In terms of points per start in the 23/24 season, Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze both rounded out the season in the top six overall. The creative freedom they are given under Glasner churns out fantasy points for fun. JP Mateta finished the season by putting up Haaland-esque numbers (monster scores with some duds sprinkled in). He’s still quite goal dependent, but that’s less of a concern when he scored 12 goals in his last 11 matches. Attackers are thriving under Glasner and long may his reign continue.

The rest of the team is similarly benefitting from a more progressive play style. We saw encouraging ghost point averages from the likes of Daniel Munoz (9.6), Joachim Andersen (8.2), Chris Richards (7.4), and Adam Wharton (6.5). It’s players like these that create the backbone for a successful fantasy team. Plus, more goals and clean sheets under Ollie G has meant that some unlikely candidates like Tyrick Mitchell became viable fantasy assets. Palace are humming and we’re hoping their hot streak continues well into the 24/25 season.

23/24 Breakout Player

Adam Wharton

Position: Midfielder

23/24 Points: 124 (85th best MID)

23/24 Points Per Start: 7.9 (15 starts)

Crystal Palace have one of the most coveted young talents in the world at the moment in Adam Wharton. He passes the eye test without a doubt. Fantasy-wise, he’s still leaving a bit to be desired. However, in a season when finding a waiver-wire midfielder was like finding water in the Sahara, Wharton was a welcomed addition. As mentioned above, he’s accumulating ghost points by putting in the hard yards: 21 key passes, 32 tackles, 20 interceptions, 24 clearances, and 8 aerials in his 15 games started. There’s room for improvement, sure, but the player’s just 20 years old.

We’re not hoping for more of the same from Wharton next season, instead we’re just hoping for more. We need to see him more involved on the attacking end, raising his ceiling from a mediocre 12.3. Normally when a player has a low GACS% (low reliance on attacking returns for fantasy points), it’s a good thing. But Wharton’s 20% GACS on a PPS of 7.9 means that he’s quite likely to stay <10 PPS unless he can produce more in the final third.

23/24 Fantasy Flop

Matheus Franca

Position: Forward

23/24 Points: 34 (88th best FWD)

23/24 Points Per Start: 7.0 (1 start)

Franca was the 20-year-old who many expected to break out this past season, largely because Palace started the season with a severe injury to Olise and Zaha departing for pastures anew. In fact, Franca was rostered in most competitive leagues early in the season purely due to the reports around his talent. However, the promising Brazilian couldn’t crack the XI under Hodgson (who famously distrusts young players). Then, Franca picked up a groin injury that would hamper him for most of the season.

In his brief cameos, Franca looked dangerous… in a couple of ways. He’s a direct dribbler who has a cutting edge and a desire to press the issue in attack. He is also young, often careless in possession, and prone to mistakes. There is a world where Franca becomes a valuable fantasy asset in 24/25, but we can’t see him being anything more than a streamer until he can show a bit more maturity and calmness on the ball.

Injury Impact

The Eagles were forced to endure a number of lengthy injury spells in 23/24. To name just some of the players who missed at least four matches were Dean Henderson, Marc Guehi, Cheick Doucoure, Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise, and Matheus Franca. In fact, Palace players missed a combined 1,496 days due to injury, 3rd most only behind Newcastle and Brentford. By all reports, players' fitness improved under Glasner. Hopefully we’ll see these injury numbers drastically decrease next season.

In terms of fantasy football impact, there are some clear implications from these injuries. If we extrapolate Eze and Olise’s brilliant numbers, they almost certainly would have both been top 10 players in total fantasy points in 23/24. As much as fantasy managers may have been frustrated by these two, they are not historically injury prone players and should not be treated as such in drafts. And lastly, injuries also meant that we’ve yet to see how players like Guehi and Doucoure will take to Glasner’s style of play. If they are anything like the rest of their colleagues, their fantasy numbers should see a similar uptick in 24/25.

Crystal Palace’s Overall Team Performance

What a strange year for Palace. After Roy Hodgson’s heroics in the previous season, ensuring the team stayed safely in the Premier League, his stabilizing and practical approach to the game only served to clip the Eagles’ wings in 23/24. The sadness of bidding adieu to a club legend was soon replaced with a delirious optimism about the club’s future after Oliver Glasner’s tactics yielded some monumental wins late in the season. Likewise, fantasy managers rejoiced as the goals flowed like manna from heaven. Palace ended the season in blistering fashion, maybe best exemplified by the fact that they had the most England call-ups (four) of any team in the Prem. The Athletic, not a site prone to hyperbole, even published an article titled “How Crystal Palace built England’s Euro 2024 squad.”

There are other encouraging aspects to Glasner’s management style as well. This could change if Palace secure some quality talent this offseason, but in 23/24 the manager had a fairly settled XI. Palace assets (unless injured) were largely safe from the rotation woes that managers of City, Brighton, and even Liverpool assets were saddled with. If you’re guaranteed minutes in an offense that has shown itself to be a factory for fantasy points, that’s a dream scenario. We head into 24/25 hoping that Glasner picks up right where he left off and that other clubs haven’t figured him out yet.