The jury is out on whether James Tomkins will prove value for money after his ten million pound transfer from West Ham United, especially while he is injured.
This transfer fee, if accurate, is more than three times as much as we have ever paid for a defender, and twenty-five times as much as we paid for Joel Ward.
We have come a long way!
For many years we did not need to buy centre backs. We had a guarantee of forty-two games a year for Jim Cannon and a supporting cast of other guys. If there was an injury we would sign someone on loan or a free. Back in the day when Billy Gilbert had finally given up on the ‘Team of the Eighties’ being the ‘Team of the Eighties’ and fled to join Vince Hilaire at Portsmouth, we signed Micky Droy, a Chelsea legend, and the second largest man to play for Palace.
Droy was an old school man mountain, somewhat lacking in pace. He was up for a physical battle, and the one he had with a young John Fashanu, possibly then at Millwall, was an epic. The sort of thing Sky Box Office charges £15.99 for these days.
It is awfully unfair to belittle Jim Cannon’s seven hundred games versus Micky Droy’s fifty-seven, but we never signed Cannon. He was delivered by stork aged seventeen, thumped Peter Osgood and scored the winning game in his debut and was wheeled off fifteen years after that.
We have produced some excellent home grown talent, like Billy Gilbert, Gareth Southgate and Richard Shaw which has meant we have not had to delve too deeply into the transfer market.
In our brief pre-2013 moments of short-term riches and over-ambition, we have splurged on expensive defenders. Valerian Ismael was for many years the club record signing, while being the guy who made Carl Leaburn, the Premier League’s lowest scoring striker, look like Lionel Messi.
More successfully, we used some of our 1990 post-Cup Final earnings to grab Eric Young from our soon to be impoverished neighbours Wimbledon. At the time, £850,000 for a thirty year old seemed a high price, but the ‘Ninja’ played at a consistently high level for the next five seasons. He was the Scott Dann of the early nineties.
Eric Young’s signing was not something we were used to. For most of our existence, we have been impoverished, and generally had to look out for bargains.
Damian Delaney must top the list of bargain signings. He might be the player that Tomkins replaces but he owes Palace nothing. Not far behind is Fan Zhiyi, perhaps a novelty signing at the time, but a really good defender who had physical strength, leadership and a decent touch on the ball.
Many other bargain signings have not quite generated the cult status that Damo, Fan Zhiyi or The Ninja have managed.
To all you eighties fans out there, any fond memories of John Lacy? Jeff Hopkins? Gavin Nebbeling? And remember 1990 Cup Final hero Gary O’Reilly arrived from Brighton to a pretty apathetic welcome.
The up and down years of the mid-nineties gave us David Tuttle, Lee Sinnott and the red card in waiting that was Kevin Muscat.
Over-ambition at the turn of the millennium brought us Dean Austin and Razor Ruddock who was the only Palace player to require larger shorts than Micky Droy. However, in our brighter moments we signed the likes of Emmerson Boyce, Craig Moore and Hermann Hriederrsssssonn but could not keep hold of them for the long term.
Some of the club’s best signings have been defenders who did not stay long. Ian Evans was tall with slicked back black hair and a natural leader. In many ways, Evans was the Jose Fonte of his day, before George Best rather unpleasantly ended his career.
Jose Fonte was and still is the Jose Fonte of his day. It is a damn shame Southampton got six seasons out of him that we could have done.
Another dark haired former Palace defender almost managed to share top billing with Fonte at the Euros. Chris Coleman was a great signing who we made a very tidy profit on, a profit that might have been higher if he had not played so many games for Palace as an emergency centre forward.
Maybe the 1995 version of Chris Coleman, sold back then for £2.8million would be worth at least £10million in 2016 money.
It is a lot of money for someone we just need to jump in the air a lot, swear at the assistant referee when he does not spot offside and to get in at the near post for flick-ons, but that is the crazy world we live in.
May he be a Ninja, a Fan or a Damo.
