During the previous international break I looked at Palace in 1971/72, the first time the club had a third consecutive season in the top flight.
This season is the third time we have celebrated that feat.
The other time was 1991/92, and I am going to look back at that season this week and next.
If you head to the Wikipedia review of the season, you are hit straight away with Ron Noades’ unfortunate quote (or mis-quote) about black players being lazy, which preceded Ian Wright’s transfer to Arsenal.
However upset we may have got about Wright’s badge-kissing at Arsenal, he was arguably Palace’s best ever player, and pretty much impossible to replace.
But Wright’s transfer did not need to be the beginning of the end of the Coppell era.
We had three consecutive seasons of enormous achievement. Promotion via the play-offs in 1988/89, the cup run in 1989/90 and a magnificent third place in 90/91. We had a very good side – Nigel Martyn in goal, Andy Thorn and Eric Young in central defence, Andy Gray and Geoff Thomas in the middle, John Salako on the wing and then Wright and Bright up front.
The club’s response to selling Wright was to go out and buy one of the most exciting strikers around – Marco Gabbiadini.
Gabbiadini turned out to have one of the most curious spells at Palace anyone has had. He scored five goals in fifteen league games, not a disaster by any means, but was sold after less than four months in south London, at a big loss, to Derby County.
I have no inside track or gossip on what went wrong. It may have been as simple as home-sickness. Gabbiadini had begun his career at York City and followed his manager Dennis Smith from there to Sunderland.
He soon became the local hero up there. I did the three years of my higher education in the north-east in the late 1980’s. At the time, both Sunderland and Newcastle United were struggling – Newcastle were desperate, and Gabbiadini was the best attacking player in the region.
Marco Goalo, as he was known up north, was not exceptionally tall and he was not fantastically quick. But he was good with his head and his feet, he was direct and positive, a good finisher, and seemed to thrive as the focal point of the team.
He had an excellent scoring record – 74 goals in 156 games on Wearside – and like the man he was replacing at Selhurst, he had a temper on him, and was not afraid of putting in a tackle.
And like Wright, he had shown he enjoyed the big occasion. In the same week in May 1990 as our Cup Final, Sunderland found themselves playing Newcastle in the play-off semi-finals.
Now, when it comes to local derbies, we have seen Norwich City play Ipswich Town in the play-offs last season, Palace against Brighton of course a couple of years ago, but I promise you neither of these compare with the madness of that north-east derby in 1990.
They had drawn 0-0 at Roker Park (Sunderland’s rickety old ground in the days before the Stadium of Light was built) and the second leg was at St James Park.
Sunderland took the lead through Eric Gates, on the losing side for Ipswich at Selhurst back in 1980, and were the better side throughout. Gabbiadini added a second in the final minutes sliding the ball past the 65 year old John Burridge (on the winning side in that same Ipswich game!) to cap a man of the match performance.
The response of the Newcastle fans was to invade the pitch, possibly with a view to having the game postponed and replayed. That proved not to be the case. The teams came back on and played out injury time. Sunderland then lost the play-off final to Swindon.
Gabbiadini had proved himself and big game player and a top second tier striker, in much the same way as Wright and Bright had done.
But something did not click in his all too brief spell with us. Maybe he was too similar a player to Mark Bright, maybe the team formation did not suit him, maybe he did not hit it off with the experienced players and management team, or maybe he was homesick for the north.
He scored five goals in fifteen league games including three in consecutive games over Christmas and New Year, and another in a 2-1 win at Anfield.
Then he was gone, off to Derby County back in the second tier, leaving us to play little known Welsh defender Chris Coleman as an emergency forward.
Wonder what Coleman was up to this weekend?
@TheEaglesBeak @Car54NC nice piece still don't know what happened myself! do know the fee was paid direct to Sunderland?Ron a bit strapped?
— Marco Gabbiadini (@marco_ten) October 12, 2015
