Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish says he has already begun planning for the club’s potential relegation to the Championship as the 17th-placed team fight for English Premier League survival this campaign.
Palace are above the league’s relegation zone on goal difference and face tough matches against top-five sides Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool in three of their remaining 10 fixtures.
Roy Hodgson’s team have won just six league matches all season and are winless in their last five games.
This has left Parish fearing the worst and wary of heading into the second tier Championship unprepared.
“We are in a difficult situation — make no mistake. People ask what I’m planning for, I’m planning for the Championship,” Parish said on Wednesday.
He added: “But really at the moment — it’s down to the players and those guys. They know it and I know it.
“What might happen is that we end up in the Championship. So, I can’t start thinking about it when it happens.”
The Premier League sold five of their seven packages for live TV broadcast of matches in the UK from 2019 to 2022 to Sky Sports and BT Sport.
The combined 4.46 billion pounds price is a way below the 5.14 billion pounds the broadcasting duo paid for the existing deal.
The reduced TV income will benefit the “lazy” top-flight clubs who, according to Parish, had spent exorbitant amounts of money on transfers.
Parish said: “I think it’ll be good for football. Because I think we waste a lot of money in the Premier League – all of us – because of this never-ending increased TV income issue.
“We’re certainly seen as a target, almost, for clubs to sell to. Their players are managed – their whole career path is managed – to sell them to us for extortionate amounts of money.
“And we’ve got lazy, I think, in terms of buying very exposed talent.
“We could all do – certainly, for me, I think I could do – a better job in terms of our recruitment and where we buy from.”
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