Crystal Palace is a historically dreadful Premier League team

Let us consider the state of Crystal Palace. They’re already on their second manager of the season. They’re at the bottom of the Premier League. And even though autumn is still young, it would be no surprise to see them still there come spring.

While every struggling football club has its own special problems; there are a few universal principles that apply. They need points. And if they can’t find any points, then they need goals. And if they can’t manage any goals either, they need hope. So let’s take a look at how Palace are doing by these criteria.

None.

When Palace picked up their sixth loss of the season, away at Manchester City, they surpassed the run of five losses from five put together by Sunderland in 2005-06. The Premier League record belongs to Portsmouth, which opened the 2009-10 season with a quite remarkable seven straight defeats — it is this record that Palace will be trying (not) to equal this weekend.

Of course, we should probably note that Pompey had their reasons: a rotating cast of owners; a gutted first-team squad; a giant shrug emoji where all their money should have been; and Paul Hart in the dugout. That Palace have a shot at equaling their ignominy without any such turmoil is really quite the achievement.

Also none. In fact, Palace’s run of zero goals in six league games is the worst goalscoring start of any top-flight team in the history of English football. Not since the league season in 1888 — Queen Victoria was on the throne; all men had to wear moustaches by law — has a team in Division One or the Premier League made a start so barren.

This is important not just for practical sporting reasons (though scoring the occasional goal does help a team win the occasional match). At a fundamental level, a football team exists to create goals: It is a machine geared toward this purpose. And as such, teams that don’t score, that can’t score, seem in some way to be violating their basic existential contract. It’s not that they’re bad. It’s that they start to edge toward purposelessness; that they barely exist at all.

Just as well, then, that Palace have managed to notch a few in the League Cup. Otherwise we’d have a yawning hole at the bottom of the Premier League table, and a fair chunk of south London would be nothing more than a blank, ragged gap.

Almost none. This weekend they play Manchester United, which have only lost once so far this season and that was to Real Madrid in a glorified preseason friendly. Since then they’ve played nine, won eight, and scored 28 goals in the process. Romelu Lukaku’s in sizzling form, and most of his teammates are looking pretty decent as well. A seventh, Pompey-equaling loss seems likely; a seventh game without scoring is strongly possible.

More generally, Christian Benteke is injured. His back-up striker is Connor Wickham, which might be a problem, were it not for the fact that he’s injured as well. For a team that has struggled to take chances, the absence of any recognised striker is, to use a technical term, a Bad Thing. The absence of Wilfried Zaha is perhaps an Even Worse Thing, since he’s by some distance Palace’s most interesting attacking player.

To further exacerbate things, their new manager is Roy Hodgson, who generally doesn’t like his teams to take too many chances. Synergy! Fearful synergy. But on the plus side, if a side is going to be bad, it’s best to be spectacularly, hilariously, record-breakingly awful. The history books are waiting, Palace. Don’t mess it up now.