Last week I began a trawl through Palace players who never fully won over the Selhurst faithful and I tried to identify common themes that cause crowd dislike of players.
I finished by considering Andy Roberts, signed from Millwall (bad thing), for a big transfer fee (not good either), replacing a key player and fan favourite – in that case Gareth Southgate.
I am sure the tag of the big transfer fee affected Roberts’ form and the crowd’s attitude towards him. A similar fate befell friend of the column Marco Gabbiadini, and also Valerian Ismael, for many years Palace’s record signing.
Ismael was not so much a figure of abuse, more pity. My thought at the time was ‘How can the club’s record signing make Carl Leaburn look like a god?‘ If you are wondering, Leaburn, who played for Charlton Athletic then Wimbledon, has one of the lowest goals to games ratios for any striker of that era.
A more obvious case of the curse of the price tag, even if it was in the era of the ‘undisclosed fee’, was Ade Akinbiyi, a man fortunate that social media was not around during his career.
Gangly centre-halves have always had a bit of a bad time with the crowd. We have not always had guys as consistent and talented as Scott Dann and Damian Delaney. Back in the eighties, we had a number of centre halves who failed to live up to the standards set by Jim Cannon and Billy Gilbert, and several players had Cannon alongside to remind them of the fact.
John Lacey, signed from Fulham, had the legs and balance of a new-born foal. South African Gavin Nebbeling was notorious for aiming most clearances for the back row of the New Stand.
Centre halves in the post Thorn and Young era also had a hard time. Dean Austin joined us from Tottenham Hotspur (reserves) as a failed right back and did not impress at centre half for us, but did turn many of the crowd in his favour for his commitment to the cause. Lee Sinnott was straight from the John Lacey mould, albeit via Watford.
Let us move on from defenders who could not defend to forwards who could not score, always an easy target for the crowd. Trevor Aylott tops this list in my father’s head anyway, but we could also add Ian Edwards (who at least scored in the ‘other’ Burnley decider in 1983), Gareth Taylor and Shefki Kuqi.
There have often been bizarre manager favourites, who incurred the wrath of the crowd – Dougie initially favoured David Wright in what became Mile Jedinak’s midfield enforcer. Back in the day, Phil Barber was seen as Steve Coppell’s weak link, but that was when he was playing as a centre forward.
Then there was Stuart Green, signed from his previous club and occasionally played by Peter Taylor, and Green was a player knew well because Green was going out with Taylor’s daughter. (Although the ‘going out with the manager’s daughter’ is one of those bits of gossip that can get out of hand …)
Next up are the mystery signings – the guys you had never heard of before their signing. It is much harder these days but not long ago there was a feeling that some of the players we signed because the scouts’ kids had become obsessed with Football Manager, especially the version that got the rating of Craig Harrison, Itzak Zohar and David Amselem so horribly wrong.
Then there is the player who had every opportunity to build a rapport with the crowd, but failed. That is especially straightforward as a keeper. Clearly the best way to do this is just to be good, but being good, happy and engaging also helps. Julian Speroni, as you know, has absolutely nailed that one.
In the opposite corner I offer you George Wood, a dour Scotsman who morosely offered token greetings for a few years in the 1980’s. Wood was never hated – I do not think we had the energy for that. Kevin Miller on the other hand was hated by the end of his Palace career. He was as dour as George Wood and appeared to give up on the club that day at Queens Park Rangers, and has never been forgiven.
Any crowd will inevitably turn on the player that wants away, especially if that player has been turned by an over-eager agent or father. Wayne Routledge was jeered before he left the club and has not been forgiven on his return. John Bostock has never returned to Selhurst Park as a player – and probably will not while plying his trade in Belgium.
I had two more categories left but most of the players I could think of fell in both categories – the player on the way down from a bigger club and the player who was not in the best shape of his career.
Youngsters out there will not remember David Price who played in the 1980 Cup Final for Arsenal, for Palace soon after and Carshalton Athletic not long after that. Price did not require a specially made Palace kit though.
Unlike Neil Ruddock, Thomas Brolin and Jamie Pollock, who arrived with big reputations and whose achievements on the weighing scales matched those reputations.
Brolin’s best was at the very highest level – he was a star at the 1992 Euros and 1994 World Cup, and had lucrative moves to Serie A. By the time we signed him, only a few years later he was many kilos above his fighting weight.
‘Razor‘ Ruddock had performed well at Tottenham and Liverpool and established himself as a hard man. His brief career at Palace saw him on the downside of his career and he was humiliated by a young Louis Saha in a humiliating defeat at Fulham.
While Ruddock could at least justify a reputation, much of Jamie Pollock’s pre-Selhurst Park reputation appeared to be in his own mind. He was a graduate of a strong Middlesborough academy and he did go on to play for Manchester City, but not the City we now know. He came, he played, he ate, he moaned and he never played league football again after we released him at the age of 27, not even the Belgian second tier.
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