Freedman should follow Warnock's lead in dealing with Zaha (From Croydon Guardian)

Freedman should follow Warnock's lead in dealing with Zaha

10:30am Monday 21st February 2011

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There is something special about witnessing local, prodigal talents develop into influential first team footballers.

Equally, there is something tragic about seeing them fail to full fulfill their undoubted potential through poor management.

Cast your mind back for a moment to August 7, at about twenty minutes past three, Wilfred Zaha when had just put Palace 1-0 up against Leicester City on the opening game of the season.

The horrors of the 2009-10 season were beginning to fade into obscurity.

What made that goal so memorable was its fitting nature in that a glimpse of the future, in Zaha himself, should have the first say in how best the club gets rid of its immediate past.

For small periods thereafter Zaha looked the part.

A strong performance away at Barnsley was followed by another at home to Ipswich as well as a quite mesmirising display of trickery down at Fratton Park where is final product also appeared to be improving.

However, since this period his performances have been on the slide.

Where once his tricks and flicks were proving an effective weapon to create openings, now they are a mere sideshow of an inconvenience to the real issue and his naivety has been well and truly exposed in recent games.

Not that this is anything new. In every sport there are young players who possess special technical skills only to leave fans frustrated at their lack of ability to apply it to a game situation.

Tiger Woods became great when he simply learned when to hit the ball low and when to hit it high.

Shane Warne turned into one of the best cricketers of all time when he learned how to bowl a simple off spin to compliment his vast repertoire of other deliveries.

However, if Dougie Freedman wishes to understand how to handle Wilfred Zaha then he need look no further than recent events at Selhurst Park concerning Victor Moses.

For, around 12 months, Neil Warnock kept Moses under wraps despite his obvious superiority in terms of footballing ability to just about every other player in the Championship.

Warnock cited Victor’s lack of willingness to put in the hard graft and his inability to play the simple pass as his reasons for omitting him from the side.

This led to cries from sections of the Palace support that Warnock was destroying Moses, that he was coaching his talent out of him and simply turning Palace’s prodigy into another Yorkshire terrier.

But nothing could have been further from the truth and Moses’s performances and goal ratio between October 2009 and February 2010, when he took Warnock’s words on board, demonstrate that.

What Warnock did was simply allow Moses time and space to recognise that you can have all the tricks in the world, but until they are applied to a game situation through effective decision making and good positional sense then they are in fact a hindrance.

It is therefore now crucial that Freedman takes similar action with regards to Wilfred Zaha.

Watching him run about the pitch like a kid in the playground is no good for anybody including, most importantly of all, Zaha himself.

Zaha has undoubted potential but is currently at the risk of having his confidence shattered simply through a lack of experience.

Yes it is important that Zaha plays against men as he is too good for the youth team, but let him experience his growing pains out of view for a while, in the relatively low pressured environment of a reserve game where he can express himself and learn from his mistakes without getting scrutinised.

What cannot be lost in all of this is that the mere fact that we are talking about this issue displays how the club is moving forward.

Since Dougie Freedman took over, the back four has become rock solid and if the coaching staff can compliment this with the effective management of exciting talents such as Wilfed Zaha, Crystal Palace is in for a great ride.

Neil Warnock always claimed that Moses would look back at those times of being forced to sit in the stands with gratitude for being showed some tough love, and Warnock will almost certainly be proved right.

It is now Dougie Freedman’s responsibility as manager during a time of great prosperity within the youth team to do exactly the same thing with someone equally as talented.

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