Welcome back to this week’s edition Fan Chat on TEB, where we can happily report Palace are safe and sound in the top eight, and, despite no goals from our recognised strikers in the league this season, we managed to stick five past a hapless Newcastle United side.
Further to this, we have the opportunity to reach safety by Christmas and become a strong and dominant force in this league, unlocking the prize pot of gold that is extra television revenue next season. This is all rather unusual for Palace isn’t it?
Normally, we would be languishing at the bottom of the table, looking vulnerable and desperate for any points from a game. But here we are, top half of the league, playing fluid, attacking and exciting football with a tactically adept manager and a chairman that has rebuilt this club in record time, and more successfully than most businessmen ever could.
In fact CPFC2010 in general have such impressive football and business acumen that I am struggling to think of many occasions where a club has been rescued and recovered in such a manner. We have stuck to our guns, played attacking football, which is always the Palace way, and have had some good fortune, but you cannot say we do not deserve every bit of our success.
Recently Palace fans voted the game at Hillsborough in 2010 as our moment of the decade. Whilst the game did not get my vote, as I did not follow Palace, or football in general as much back then, it still resonates with me as an important moment in our history. The interviews with past players highlight how important the fans were that day, and they have been instrumental in our success, and still are to this day.
Now, without wishing to reminisce too much, let us return to the here and now. As we find ourselves approaching silly season, and the calls for Palace to splash out on a prolific striker return, I wish to bypass any talk on the subject as I doubt Pardew is reading this, so I am not going to waste words demanding for one. Let us assume for a minute, that we do not purchase or sell any players in the next window, what can we do to keep our success going into the new year and beyond?
The answer lies with the following four words names – Zaha, Bolasie, Sako, Puncheon.
These men embody all that Palace stand for. Arguably there are better players in the league in their respective positions, and they are definitely not the most prolific players in the league either. Yet, their passion for the club, and their ability to surprise, dazzle and amaze us fans, even after seeing some of them play for us for many years is testament to their journey with the club, continuously improving and looking to better their play. The issue for us at the moment is their consistency, because for the amount of games they play that they impress in, there seems to be as many where they appear lacklustre, or unable to perform to their regular high standards. Why is that?
It is a serious question, because the expression, ‘consistently inconsistent‘ raises its ugly head far too often, and we rely on our wing play so much that when those four men are not performing at their normal level, the whole team under-performs too. That said, they also have the ability to pull something incredible out of the bag from nothing at all. If they could all play like they did at Newcastle last week, we would be laughing and able to stand toe to toe with pretty much anybody in the league. Except maybe Leicester City!
There are so many reasons why supporting Palace is so promising right now, and after the turmoil of the last twenty or so years, even the years before I was born, the fans certainly deserve this moment, and many more for years to come. I however, have been used to watching Palace struggle for so many years that our recent success seems a little bit, well, boring! Do not get me wrong, I am delighted with the upturn in fortunes for the club, but going into a game, on a Tuesday night in the Championship, not knowing if you were going to win 2-1 or lose 4-0 was exciting. It was that excitement and nervousness that was the best bit about supporting Palace, and I am happy to have been a part of the support in those seasons of few ups and many downs.
Perhaps I am being a little selfish, as this is the success we as Palace fans have always dreamed about, and we are living it right now, and I could not be happier in some respects. The security of the Premier League, and the financial rewards that it brings really are welcome, and will benefit our club so much, with stadium refurbishments the first step of a long process to establish this fine, magnificent club as a Premier League mainstay. With investment around the corner and a wave of optimism surrounding the club, we are going places, and I am happy to be a part of that.
Lets keep this momentum going, to Everton on Monday, to the end of another year, another season, and another decade, just like the last, with ups, as well as downs, highs, as well as lows, and in ten years time, we will all be voting for another moment in the next decade which defines our future as a club.
You could argue that few will be as important as that special day back in 2010, but that moment has made the club what it is today and means that this great club has a future. Perhaps, as we approach Christmas, we can rather than complain about not having a ‘good enough‘ striker, reflect on how far we have come, how much we have achieved, and how much more there is to come. We have had far worse times than now, and it would not be Palace if we had perfect players in every position.
It just would not be exciting enough!
Up the Palace!
