Frank De Boer wants to stick to his guns at Crystal Palace – but time is against him

After agreeing to take charge of Crystal Palace in June, Frank de Boer sought advice from a former manager who has become a friend, Louis van Gaal. The 66-year-old has been a key influence on De Boer, having managed him at Ajax, Barcelona and the Dutch national team. Van Gaal offered his protégé tips for succeeding in England based on his two years at Manchester United, from which he apparently carries a curious disappointment that De Boer is determined to avoid.

“The only thing he regretted was that he played 3-4-3 in pre-season and then he lost the first game [against Swansea City in August 2014] and changed it to 4-3‑3,” says De Boer. “He regretted that, and that’s why you have to stick to your own philosophy. He did the same at Barcelona when he put Rivaldo in the No10 position; suddenly the team wasn’t the team anymore, and we went down in performance.Always stick to your own philosophy: that’s a very important lesson.”

Given how often Van Gaal used to appeal for patience for his philosophy to bear fruit, it is surprising to hear he now believes he deviated too much from his own creed. But the most pertinent thing is that the revelation has reinforced De Boer’s conviction that he must not recant his own beliefs when under pressure. And he is certainly under pressure as he takes Palace to Burnley on Sunday in search of the club’s first points of the season.

“I always stick to my principles,” says De Boer, stressing that remaining faithful to his philosophy does not mean being inflexible. He objects to the claim he is a dogmatist trying in vain to impose an Ajax model on Palace, pointing out that he has not used the 4-3-3 formation that he favoured at his previous club and that Palace have frequently passed forward more quickly than Ajax did.

In one sense De Boer is right that he is being caricatured. It is worth remembering that Steve Parish, the chairman now mulling over replacing the manager, said in June that one of the reasons why De Boer was hired was that he convinced the board he could tailor his methods to his new surrounds. “The amount of effort he had made to look at the club, look at the staff, how we play – all of those things were unbelievably impressive when I sat down with him,” he said.

De Boer explains that the 5-3-2 system that started the three league matches was intended to achieve defensive solidity while allowing the team’s most creative players, especially Wilfried Zaha (until his injury), to devote most of their energies to attacking. Twice he has altered the formation at half-time, switching to a back-four. So he is not wedded to a particular shape.

It was clear from watching him during the 3-0 home defeat by Huddersfield Town on the opening day of the season that he is not a style fundamentalist either. Through frantic gesticulations he tried to persuade players to send long passes forward rather than tiptoe out of defence and fall victim to Huddersfield’s pressing. But the players kept attempting to play their way out as if they, too, were following preconceptions about De Boer rather than his instructions.

If De Boer’s philosophy is tied neither to a formation nor to a precise style, what does it entail? What are the principles to which he vows to stick? What should De Boer’s Palace look like? “I want players that recognise what they have to do in certain situations,” he says. “They have to recognise ‘OK, now we have to do this, now we have to do that’. Of course, that takes time. If we play on the left, what our full-back has to do is go automatically so I don’t have to shout from the bench. All those things.”

What De Boer wants, then, is players who always have the wit to see the best option and the ability to execute it. His philosophy is that players should be brilliant. Lovely. But a long-term project if ever there was one.

De Boer had success at Ajax with players reared in that culture and allowed to play at a pace conducive to thought. Internazionale, who play at a higher level and tempo, decided after 85 days that De Boer was not going to develop a team of geniuses any time soon. Palace, full of players who have generally been more comfortable with simpler instructions and who have made several costly individual mistakes this season after being caught in several minds, may quickly reach a similar conclusion.