At long last the wait for the start of our 2015/16 Premier League campaign is nearly over.
Our team is stronger than this time last year, we have gained respect of pundits for some of our performances proving they are more than just flukes and we have a manager that is not going to walk out moments before the first match.
Just like the start of every season, it feels a little different. There is talk of us pushing for Europe and of a top eight or even a top six finish. We cannot imagine our manager ever walking away from us or being pushed out at the smallest disagreement. Youth players that have had some time to prove themselves in pre-season games are being eyed up for loans by teams from the lower leagues. We even have a proper pitch with some very technical and complex growing process that, unlike last year, will hopefully manage to not just disappear under the players pitch in our first home game.
The club seem to really be pushing for more fan involvement as well. They have brought together all the hard work of the media team to put all the interviews, press conferences and little snippets onto one website. And despite a few streaming failures they tried pretty hard to bring pre-season games to us when it was obvious that a lot of fans would not be able to get to the games. In fact there was a lot of anger about those streams not working and sure I was among the angered voices.
The frustration was especially felt on the day of the Cape Town Cup where they just forgot to put a link on the website and then for the final game they sent an email apologising for the technical errors and promised to bring us uninterrupted coverage of the match only to state a few paragraphs later that because it was being streamed from South Africa there may be some technical difficulties.
The greatest amount of anger was after we lost the final of a cup put on to provide a bit more of an exciting time than the usual pre-season friendlies and to see us return to South Africa after so many years. Of course ,it is the sort of game we want to win and the South African commentators deemed us to be favourites but Pardew made important points and suggested that he had seen some of the things he wished for.
If Pardew is starting to feel happy about the way pre-season is shaping up and performances from certain players then can we as fans not just be a little happy for once?
We got to see new signings play and settle into the dynamic of the team. We spotted players like Yannick Bolasie interacting with the crowd and putting on that big grin that suggests any offers that come our way he might not want to accept. We saw academy and youth players being given a chance because as some of you may recall at the end of season awards Pardew admitted he had not really looked over the youth team. He clearly has now and sees more potential than previous managers. We also witnessed a couple of players fighting for their footballing lives and Palace dreams on that pitch and they will either end up sold, loaned or making their way back into the team.
Of course, we want silverware and fancy titles and to be a force to be reckoned with but pre-season is about more than that. Besides, Pardew is a clever man and maybe he is trying to keep his cards close to his chest so that other Premier League teams cannot analyse what is happening at the club right now. We certainly do not want to be peaking too early and I think we would all rather lose in South Africa and be building up to a fantastic run of opening games at the start of the season.
Unless of course it is just me that thinks that. Then I back down. To me there is silverware that matters and that cup, however fun and nice it was to have a little competition, is not something that matters. It was simply a warm-up event, as were many of the friendlies where at no point we had a full strength side on the pitch, and that should be remembered and appreciated.
Finally the season is here and we should not hold anything back. It is time to go full throttle and throw everything we have at living up to those increasingly high expectations of fans, internally at the club and amongst the pundits.
Another year in the Premier League is on the agenda and it looks like an agenda we can complete with a massive tick.
