With a new season comes new beginnings. New faces, new ideas, new overpriced kits, new optimism.
While full of its frustrations, pre-season can be quite therapeutic for some.
Wade through the stream of rumours and outlandish make believes that populate the sports pages, and it is a place of safety. Static in nature, your view on a club or a season is unsullied by recent results, or by the topsy turvy form your topsy turvy goalkeepers.
The calm before the sh*tstorm.
It can be quite like Christmas, depending on your own experiences of the festive season.
You’ve spent the last twelve months playing with the same toys, but as time wore on and your patience diminishing, Christmas Eve marks the last miserable day you have to spend with your My Little Pony replica. No longer will you face ridicule for brandishing a Sega Megadrive at a party full of PS4’s. Gone are those days. You never liked the Megadrive much anyway. You’ve been saying as much for years.
You’d be forgiven for getting carried away with such presents. Last season, pulses were set racing with the arrival of Yohan Cabaye, and early deals this summer for Andros Townsend and Steve Mandanda certainly struck the right chord. For a generation of Palace fans used to announcements of Florian Marange or Elliot Grandin, the early activity was encouraging. The less said about the striker shaped hole in the Palace squad, the better.
But amidst the flurry of wrapping paper and half read instruction manuals, a more significant narrative takes place in the background. The feverish excitement and blind delight acts as a smokescreen for the once lauded toys’ demise.
New things are generally procured to replace worn or used items that have run their course. Sure, everyone would love to own three kettles, but there’s only room in the squad for one kettle, playing in the hole, so two kettles must settle for a kitchen elsewhere. There is a sense at Palace that this might be in process at the moment.
While inevitable that times move on as well as people, there could be a significant changing of the guard in the Palace dressing room this summer and into the coming months.
Paddy McCarthy, one would argue, hasn’t been a member of the Palace squad for many years, however his release at the end of the season no doubt represents significant dressing room and club figure departing. Say what you want about his playing ability (or lack of), but there were always positive noises about his impact behind the scenes. A commanding figure on the training ground, and inspirational nod to the pre-2010 days when Premier League riches were a fantasy.
Of course, these things happen naturally and to suggest that players past it having to move on is a bad thing is regressive. So this is merely an observation.
Much like Mile Jedinak observed his captain’s armband being passed across the dressing room to Scott Dann recently. While not many will argue with the decision, it is with a rather heavy heart that Palace fans move to the reluctant acceptance that Jedinak will likely take leave on that note. Again, not a decision to make fans indignant, but another potentially huge character in the Palace cast.
Alongside Dann, it is very likely that James Tomkins will usurp Delaney, and while it is clear that Damo won’t be going anywhere, it represents another gentle shift in the dynamics of the football club. Julian Speroni? Well, we all know where we stood on that one last season and one can safely assume he will take the mantle of the Premier League’s best third choice keeper for the second consecutive season. But another stalwart with diminishing stature
Is there any point to this post if much of what is happening is agreeable?
Maybe not. But if there is a point to be made, it is perhaps about making sure that any newly unwrapped Christmas presents can fill the void left by those trusty toys of old. For it is only years later, when the dust settles, that you realise just how good a console the Sega Megadrive was, and how they don’t make ’em like they used to.
