By Opta Analyst | Created at 2025-03-13 08:25:47 | Updated at 2025-03-13 11:08:34
2 hours ago
After several seasons at clubs where he looked like a misunderstood talent, Oliver Glasner and Crystal Palace are bringing out the best in Ismaïla Sarr.
Not much noise was made when Crystal Palace signed Ismaïla Sarr on the eve of the season – it almost went under the radar of Premier League followers. Once one of the most promising players from Africa, the Senegal international had struggled to make much of an impact at either Watford or Marseille before arriving in south London.
Now, just seven months after signing for the Eagles, the winger is beginning to show the talent that has seen clubs spend nearly £100 million in transfer fees on him already in his career.
His match-winning goal in the 1-0 win over Ipswich Town last weekend was the latest impactful moment of his short spell at Palace, and Sarr finally looks to have found a club and an environment in which he can prosper.
Flourishing in a Stable Environment
Back in August when Sarr signed for Palace, we detailed how he’d spent his career in chaotic situations. Playing for two of Europe’s least patient clubs with regards to giving managers time – Watford and Marseille – didn’t help, with the Senegalese winger never able to get a run under the guidance of the same coach and consistent tactical plan.
Sarr has already played 2,085 minutes of top-flight football under Oliver Glasner at Crystal Palace. Despite appearing in seven different top-flight seasons during his career, this is already the second most playing time in league competition that he’s had under a manager.
Only under Sabri Lamouchi at Rennes (2,524) has he played more minutes for a coach – a tally that will undoubtedly be beaten this season with 10 Premier League games still to play in 2024-25.
It helps that he’s being deployed in his strongest position, wide on the right, too. Across all competitions this season, Sarr has played 86% of his minutes in that position, the vast majority in a 3-4-2-1 formation, which is up from 50% of his minutes across all competitions at Marseille last season.
It was a slow start to the season by both Palace and Sarr. Coming into their ninth game of the campaign at home to Tottenham Hotspur on 27 October, Palace sat third from bottom with just three points on the board. They were one of only four teams yet to win a match.
Sarr only managed 234 minutes of Premier League action across those opening eight matchdays, with 144 of those coming as a substitute, the former Watford man Palace’s most-used sub in that period (7).
The win over Spurs changed that. Not only was it the kickstart Palace needed, but it also meant Sarr forced his way into Glasner’s side. Since that win over Spurs, he’s started all 20 of their Premier League matches and only four outfielders have played more minutes in the competition.
More importantly, Sarr has been their leading chance creator in open play since that win over Spurs (26) and had a direct involvement in 10 of their goals (7 goals, 3 assists). Only Jean-Philippe Mateta (12) has more.
Since the Spurs victory in late October, Palace have collected 36 points in the Premier League – only Arsenal (38) and Liverpool (49) have won more.
Finding Consistency
Sarr’s seven Premier League goals for Palace have set him on his way to breaking a personal record. Only in 2018-19 at Rennes (eight goals) has he scored more times in a top-flight league campaign. That season alerted Watford to his talents, with the Hornets forking out a club-record fee of £25m in August 2019.
After securing their best-ever Premier League finish and reaching an FA Cup final the season before, the move to Watford may have looked positive to outsiders, but Sarr entered chaos at Vicarage Road. In his first campaign, he had to play under four different head coaches, and it was the season interrupted two-thirds of the way through due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sarr’s best performance of the season came just two weeks before the Premier League was stopped, having a hand in every goal (two goals, one assist) and finishing as man of the match in a shock 3-0 home win that ended eventual champions Liverpool’s 18-game winning streak.
With the pandemic then forcing a stop for three months, Sarr undoubtedly struggled to cope in isolation in a new country at the age of 23. He failed to score and assisted just once in his final nine appearances after the return of football as Watford were relegated.
After starring in Watford’s promotion-winning Championship campaign the following season, his return to the Premier League proved just as chaotic as his first. The 2021-22 campaign ended with Watford relegated yet again, and they (again) got through three permanent managers. Sarr contributed just seven goal involvements (five goals, two assists).
Now 27 years old, Sarr has matured into a more consistent player. In his first campaign at Palace, he has posted career-best season averages for both non-penalty expected goals per 90 (0.36) and expected assists per 90 (0.23) in league competition. He’s become more clinical in front of goal too, with his 16.3% conversion rate from non-pen shots higher than in any of the previous five top-flight seasons.
This comes despite seeing less of the ball than normal. He averages six touches fewer per 90 minutes this season than he did last term at Marseille, which may not sound a lot, but over a 38-game season is quite a difference. He’s had to get used to working harder off the ball than on it, but this is where Sarr is beginning to show his worth to Palace.
Hard Work Pays Off
With the departure of Michael Olise to Bayern Munich in the summer, Palace needed to find a replacement. Sarr wasn’t a like-for-like replica but it was always going to be hard to replace a talent like Olise with the budget that Palace have. If anything, they have sacrificed elements of Olise’s creativity with a more hard-working version.
Sarr has run further than any Palace player to have played at least 1,500 minutes in the Premier League this season (11.4km per 90 on average), which also places him 10th across all players in the competition. He is also one of only two players that you could consider a winger in the top 20, behind only Dejan Kulusevski (12.3km/90), and the Tottenham man has spent a significant chunk of the season in central midfield.
Glasner’s Palace don’t prioritise keeping possession for long periods of time. So far this season, their average possession figure of 43.7% is the fourth lowest in the competition, while they are one of just four clubs to average fewer than 300 successful passes per game (299.9).
But in a similar vein to Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth – two other teams who aren’t particularly concerned with high possession figures but have had brilliant campaigns so far – they work hard off the ball with intense pressing, and display high fitness levels with their running out of possession.
Palace top the Premier League rankings for total pressures (6,138) and pressures in the middle third of the pitch (3,235) this season, while they are also the top team for turnovers of possession after a pressure both overall (854) and in the middle third of the pitch (380).
Sarr has been an integral part of Palace’s press. Only Bruno Fernandes (447) has made more pressures in the middle third of the pitch than Sarr in the Premier League this season (430), while on a per-90 basis, it’s only Dominic Solanke (22.5) above Sarr (20.0).
Of course, a successful pressing strategy involves more than one player. Sarr is backed up in these rankings by both Mateta (407 – fourth highest) and Eberechi Eze (368 – seventh highest) for middle-third pressures.
Unlike teams who prefer to press high up the pitch, like Man City, Arsenal, Brighton and Liverpool, Palace look to put pressure in deeper positions and use their pace in attack to get in behind opposition defences. Only Nottingham Forest (18.8%) have made a lower proportion of their presses in the final third than Palace (22.2%) this season.
Those tactics are clearly working out for Palace, and Sarr in particular. With 10 games of the season remaining, Palace need just 11 more points to set a new club record points tally in the Premier League (50), surpassing the 49 points secured last season, 2018-19 and the inaugural Premier League campaign in 1992-93.
There’s even an outside chance that they could sneak a European spot for next season, which would be their first taste of continental competition outside of an Intertoto Cup experience in 1998.
The hard work looks to be paying off off, and Sarr is certainly reaping the rewards under Glasner.
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