Crystal Palace need a pragmatic Frank de Boer, while Marco Silva is under pressure to impress at Watford

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Danny Murphy1 September 2017

Mamadou Sakho is a fine player and will add strength and personality to this Crystal Palace side - but is Frank de Boer pragmatic enough to move them up the table?

If he doesn’t deviate a bit from the playing style he has used in the early weeks of the season then he could be gone quite quickly.

Do the players believe in what he is trying to do, after so many of them helped the club avoid relegation under Sam Allardyce?

It is not time to panic just yet but the players have to be on board with what the manager is trying to do.

In my first few months at Fulham under Lawrie Sanchez, we had a team of footballers and we were asked to play a long-ball game. Take it from me - it doesn’t work.

Tough task for Silva

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Marco Silva is a clever guy who organises his teams well. Watford have made some decent signings in the window - Andre Gray, Nathaniel Chalobah, Tom Cleverley. But I am not sure they can push too far up the table.

There are many teams in the Premier League who are at a similar level, so if they lose two or three games in a row, they start to feel the pinch and it can be hard to turn around.

In those cases, the manager has to keep his nerve and not make too many changes of tactics and personnel.

Often it boils down to luck. Can you keep your goalscorers fit, and your most experienced players? If they are absent, the task becomes very difficult indeed.