Frank de Boer is the best coach Crystal Palace could have got, and he'll start their youthful rebuild

De Boer has analysed the squad and wants to bring in players aged between 21 and 24, either from abroad, or those who have not quite made the grade at the big clubs, to bring down the average age

Frank De Boer will look to rehabilitate his reputation after a wild but brief spell with Inter (Getty)

It has been a long wait since Sam Allardyce walked out, but Crystal Palace are close to landing a better manager than any they have looked at so far.

There is much to be said for Sean Dyche, Marco Silva and Mauricio Pellegrino but Frank De Boer has a better record than any of them. Ignore the farcical 14-game spell in charge of Internazionale, under new Chinese ownership. It is De Boer’s five-and-a-half seasons in charge of Ajax that has impressed Palace so much and finally earned him a Premier League job.

In that spell De Boer won four Eredivisie titles, returning his team to the peak of the Dutch game. That might not sound like much but when he took over, in December 2010, the club was in crisis and had not won the league since 2004, back when they could call upon Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Wesley Sneijder and Rafael van der Vaart.

But De Boer was part of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ of former players, many of whom played in the 1995 Champions League winning side, inspired by Johann Cruyff, who turned the club round at the start of the decade. He was in place just before the revolution, but was a comfortable part of it, as were his former team-mates Marc Overmars, Wim Jonk, Denis Bergkamp and Edwin van der Sar who all found jobs.

De Boer is not a zealot of Cruyff football but his meticulous coaching and methodical football were important in stabilising the team and improving the individuals. After years of spending too much money on players, De Boer rediscovered their ability to improve through coaching and sell at a profit, which, in short, is how Ajax have gone from debt to surplus.


 De Boer was part of the Cruyff-inspired 'Velvet Revolution' 
 (Getty)

Jan Vertonghen, Vurnon Anita, Christian Eriksen, Toby Alderweireld, Siem de Jong, Daley Blind, Jasper Cillessen and Arkadiusz Milik: there is a long list of players who De Boer improved at Ajax and sold on for big money, many to the Premier League. Even Eriksen’s replacement, Davy Klaasen, has now completed the same process Eriksen did, doing his four first-team seasons before joining Everton last week for £26m.

That coaching pedigree has given Palace confidence that De Boer can refresh a first team that needs it. Palace do not have much money to spend this summer, but De Boer has analysed the squad and wants to bring in players aged between 21 and 24, either from abroad, or those who have not quite made the grade at the big clubs, to bring down the average age of the squad. He has shown what he can do with young players and would also like to promote from the youth academy if the players are there.

De Boer appreciates how hard it is to be a young player in the Premier League but he wants to develop something long term at Palace and leave a legacy there. He spent five and a half years at Ajax even if he was close to plenty of English jobs in the past, not least Liverpool in 2012 and Tottenham in 2014.

But when he finally left Ajax it was to a shambolic Inter. He arrived nine days before the start of the Serie A season, worked for an interfering and intrusive Chinese board, was castigated for not picking their €35million signing Gabigol, and was sacked after just 85 days in charge. It was no place to build anything. His replacement Stefano Pioli did not last much longer later. At Palace, De Boer hopes, things will be different.