A truly bizarre story broke last night via Bobby Manzi, stating that Steve Parish has been left ‘frustrated’ by Pierre Sage’s decision to leave Jaydee Canvot out of his matchday squad last weekend. 

Canvot has started the season poorly, along with Chris Richards, but was fairly dropped in favour of the other options that Pierre Sage has within his Crystal Palace squad. 

Despite this, a football manager making a managerial decision has supposedly upset the ‘decision-makers’ enough to cause this story to leak. 

The first point to make is that Jaydee Canvot is not the only player that Sage has dropped from matchday squads this season. 

Dwight McNeil and Evann Guessand were omitted due to poor performances, decisions which were celebrated and praised by fans. Now the same has happened to Canvot, the reaction has been different. 

Sage was brought to the club to manage a football team, and if he thinks that the best thing for Palace is to make decisions that he feels benefit the chances of winning games, he has every right to do that. 

The irony is that he was proven right. Palace defended more resolutely against Ipswich than they had for any of the games Canvot played, aside from a handful of individual errors for their goals. 

Palace fans are likely not used to having a squad deep enough that actual omissions have to be made, and it’s only going to happen more when Jean-Philippe Mateta and Ismaïla Sarr return. 

Yes, it may seem drastic to drop a player from a squad entirely, but at the end of the day it’s Sage’s choice and job to make those decisions, and the higher ups at the club should know better than to publicly question him. Where is the unity? 

Additionally, Takehiro Tomiyasu, who was selected as the natural central defender on the bench, has started the year really well and shown great form and application. It’s also vital to remember that Sage is seeing these players in training every single day, so if he makes a decision, it might be wise to accept that he probably has a better idea of what he’s doing than you or I. 

On the face of it there seems very little reason for this story to have been leaked. It’s not come from the manager, that's for sure. Either the club, or the player’s agent have done so. But why?

For the club, it would make sense to begin planting seeds of doubt amongst the fansbase so that if they feel it necessary to sack Sage, there’s a paper trail of supposed unrest that can be used as excuses. 

Results haven’t been incredible, and whilst it would be a frankly barbaric and rushed decision if he was to be dismissed due to any poor results before the international break, it wouldn’t be the first time that Palace have panicked and made a misguided choice. 

For the player, it would not seem likely at all. Canvot has been dropped because he has started the season poorly, and played particularly badly at Fulham. Sage hasn’t exactly suggested that this now means the player is incapable of returning to the first team. In fact, he’s actively encouraged Canvot, along with McNeil and Guessand to use that disappointment to push themselves to a higher level. 

The leaked information particularly focused on Steve Parish’s frustration that a ‘young value-appreciating asset’ has been left out, a truly bizarre stance if true. 

Pierre Sage was hired to make decisions and should be given the freedom to do that, especially when he has alternative options that have performed better in the opening weeks. 

Results have been slow, but we're five games into a brand new system after having essentially no pre-season with a full squad. Even now, Sage is without Palace's two top scorers from last season, yet there seems to be an overwhelming lack of patience, patience that was shown in abundance to Oliver Glasner at times across his tenure.