Crystal Palace’s Expiring Contract Issue

Crystal Palace have a large number of first-team players whose contracts
expire in the summer of 2021 (either contract expiry or the end of a loan). The number of players they might lose could lead to a complete clearout of their squad for the next season, or a scramble to resign their players.

To visualise the problem the situation they are in and how abnormal it is, the number of players they stand to lose can be compared to the other premier league clubs, as well as their reliance on these players.

Number of players running out of contract

Visualising the number of players that have played for Crystal Palace this season that have their contract expiring in the summer. All clubs (including Crystal Palace) might have more players running out of their contract, but this figure only takes into account players that have played so far in the 2020/21 season. This means no team’s value will be skewed by players that have not contributed to the first team this season e.g. youth team players.

Crystal Palace leads the way with 12 players that have played so far this season whose contract expires in the summer. This is just over 4 times the league average. The significance of this value can be compounded by looking at the importance of these players to the squad. This can be done by looking at the proportion of minutes played by players that they stand to lose for next year.

Percentage of minutes played by players with expiring contracts

A high value would represent a team that stands to lose a lot of their key players next season. This would mean a large number of changes in the squad which could have a positive or negative impact.

Palace leads the way again, with nearly half of their minutes this season coming from players they are currently not going to have for next season. Again, this is nearly 4x the league average.

These numbers guarantee neither impending doom nor an exciting renaissance for Palace but instead highlight a potential problem and something to keep an eye out for this summer.

A combined graphic of these two figures can be seen below.

These figures can all be found in a higher resolution on Behance.