Palace are limping across the finish line, and the rumour mill is already kicking into life.
News of a potentially record breaking bid for an Italian international is likely to be followed up with months of speculation, rumours and fantasy.
With such an elite new calibre of player being linked to the club, you could be forgiven for glossing over news of some of the current squad’s lesser lights moving on.
It is very easy to forget about Owen Garvan, a player who this week announced on Twitter that he was moving on from the club. Garvan was a player who played a crucial role in Crystal Palace’s rise to the Premier League, and ultimately became a victim of his own success.
The forgotten man, in a sense, who went from being a midfielder on the brink of an international breakthrough to a perennial twenty one year old banished to the development squad to earn his stripes playing alongside academy graduates and hopefuls.
Garvan’s time at Palace will be remembered in a mixed fashion. Heralded for solid performances in the Championship but with question marks over his attitude following a Twitter outburst at Holloway’s decision to omit him from his twenty five man Premier League squad. But focusing on this as a barometer for his time at the club does a great disservice to a man who displayed gracious appreciation of what Crystal Palace have achieved in his time at the club.
People forget just how missed he was when he got injured in the promotion season, which coincided with the run of form that nearly conspired to force Palace out of the playoffs. The range of passing that Garvan brought to the Palace midfield was key in providing the team with the quality to establish themselves as promotion contenders.
While he proved adept at Championship level, most onlookers were in agreement that he just was not Premier League pedigree in his few fleeting appearances at the beginning of last season. Seemingly lacking in pace and strength, Garvan’s next eighteen months were spent shipped out at relatively poor Championship clubs whilst Palace and some of those players he played alongside in the Championship were scaling new heights in the Premier League.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy but also the most fitting, was that Garvan saw out his last months at the club out of sight with the youngsters. It is reflective of how his career has panned out so far. When he broke through the ranks at Ipswich Town, he was widely regarded as a future international star in the making.
Comparisons between his playing style and that of Steven Gerrard’s, while fantastical, were not entirely unbelievable given the promise that he displayed from a young age. Throughout his time in the Irish under 21 setup, he displayed the football intelligence that set him apart from those around him which led to many early rumours of larger clubs sniffing around Portman Road.
But Garvan’s career never really took off. While he has had a number of injuries that have stifled his progress, moving to Palace when he did was seen as a backward step following Ipswich’s decision to allow him to move on. While he recaptured some of his finest form in the red and blue, it never seemed like he was the midfield dynamo that he was promised to be as a teenager.
He seems destined to be one of those players who has the potential to be a great player, right up until the moment you realise he is not a promising youngster anymore, and is in fact a 27 year old mid-level footballer who may never realise his full potential. That is not down to attitude, but merely down to physical limitations that as a teenager he might hoped to have improved on by now.
For the player, his next move is crucial. It can become easy to float between Championship clubs on a temporary basis, but without permanency and the right move, it will be hard for any player to find consistency.
It is hard to believe that Garvan has been at Palace for close to five years. He was not Premier League quality but was a loyal and hardworking player who played his part in getting Palace to where they are now.
Let us remember him for his playing ability, rather than some of the questionable Twitter remarks. Here’s hoping he finds the right club.
