In the last of the articles looking at Palace’s summer signings, it is time to take a brief look at the history of players flying down the wings at Selhurst Park.
It seems odd to have to pay good money for Andros Townsend.
For years it seemed, he was the torchbearer for a new breed of footballer – a guy with a nice contract at a big club, who couldn’t get into the first team, and therefore was sent to the far reaches of the football league or bottom half of the Championship to get a game.
Sorry for that long sentence. What I meant to say was that for years he wasn’t as good as Aaron Lennon.
I’m fine with the signing, particularly now that Yannick Bolasie has left. Townsend is a good player, an exciting player, and plays in a style that Palace fans are familiar with.
We love a winger down at Selhurst. A bit of pace to nip either side of the full back, a sharp cross, a fierce shot. We are all over that.
We’re all over the scuffed cross into the Holmesdale, the intercepted pass, and the shrug instead of the effort to get the ball back as well, but it’s the start of another season so let’s be positive.
The thing with the Townsend signing is that it feels we have never had to splash out that sort of money for a winger. We can produce one of our own thanks.
The truth is that we have been spoilt by some exceptional talent and we have selective memories of periods where we have had no Hilaire, no Salako, no Moses and no Zaha.
Since November 1972, Palace have been associated with having wingers with flair. That period began with the signing of two exceptional players, but after Peter Taylor was sold to Spurs in 1976/77, we have been able to produce several of our own flair players.
Let’s be honest though.
The Don was the Don.
My Palace history begins with Don Rogers and I still watch in awe at his skills. Never mind the skills, look at the pitches he played on (and let’s be honest Selhurst has rarely been confused for a croquet lawn).
But rather like the embodiment of Bruce’s Generation Game, Palace had a conveyor belt of wingers. After Don Rogers, came Peter Taylor, poster boy of the 1976 Cup run and England international from the Third Division.
After Peter Taylor came Vince Hilaire, a focal point of that ‘Team of the Eighties’ period, and someone who had to deal with the most unimaginable nonsense.
And Hilaire had to fight off the best efforts of the wonderfully named Neil Smillie, with the spectacular possible permed curls, who had to shuffle off to the supermarkets of the south coast for a bit of first team action (and a Cup Final losers medal).
After Hilaire fled in despair to Portsmouth, the conveyor belt slowed down for a few years. We signed the dour but efficient Alan Irvine and the rather more interesting Neil Redfearn as part of the mid-eighties revival. Both would return north before long.
Eddie McGoldrick was a classic old school jinky winger, who we signed just as John Salako began to break through. McGoldrick impressed enough to generate a decent transfer fee from his surprise move to Arsenal.
John Salako made his debut for the club aged about twelve but flourished during and after the epic 1990 cup run, emerging from the shadow of Wright and Bright to become an international player, before his knees went.
The mid to late nineties brought us the most flamboyant winger since Don Rogers. Lombardo was one of the most recognised stars of European football when he mysteriously signed for us in 1997. Like Don Rogers and Peter Taylor before him, he was not around for as long as we like to remember but what a player. Those goals against Leeds United and Everton in his first few games for us were in a different league.
Later overseas signings like Andrejs Rubins were not quite in the same class!
It took a while to find a home grown winger after Salako, but at least the conveyor belt seems to be back in operation by the end of the noughties.
Victor Moses made his debut in 2007 aged sixteen and took about five minutes to become a crowd favourite and the victim of never-ending abuse from Neil Warnock on the touchline. Moses was an inevitable casualty of the 2010 administration but we had a replacement waiting literally in the wings for him. He is still only twenty-five!
That replacement was Sean Scannell.
Just behind Scannell though was Wilf. It looked like we could have two home grown wingers on the flanks using considerable pace and skill to destroy the Championship. Scannell never looked quite good enough but Bolasie came along at the perfect time to join Wilf.
The very same Wilf we have today (just!), albeit with the peculiar interruptions that we seemed to profit nicely from.
So Andros Townsend has a lot to live up to. He is off to a quiet start – Lombardo had scored two great goals by this stage of his Palace career, but let’s hope that Townsend turns out to be a better long-term bet.
