It is always exciting when Palace make a marquee signing.
While this one is not quite in the Lombardo or Cabaye category, we hope that in Steve Mandanda we have signed possibly the best keeper to warm a bench at Euro 16, a keeper who could easily have started for France yand more than good enough to play for several nations, such as Hungary and more importantly Wales.
Palace have not made many high profile signings of keepers in recent history, and certainly not when we already had three viable keepers competing for the slot.
Such are the luxuries Palace find themselves in nowadays. Back in the day, Malcolm Allison sold the legendary John Jackson without seeming to have a proper replacement.
More recently Palace signed post-modern hipster hero Gabor Kiraly and Julian Speroni in the same off-season of 2004 and let them slug it out to see who would be number one. In typically curious Palace logic, the answer ‘both of them’, Kiraly in the short term, Jules for the medium and longer term.
But Palace’s transfer activity in terms of buying goalies has been fairly orthodox. Usually we have been in a parlous state and taken whoever would sign for us.
Exceptionally, we took a huge risk both in terms of cash and lack of experience in signing our best keeper. Poor Perry Suckling, who had seemed a good keeper and a good guy, appeared to be permanently haunted by the 9-0 drubbing at Anfield. A few weeks later, we signed the “highly touted Cornishman from Bristol Rovers”, a phrase that has only ever been used for one footballer – step forward Nigel Martyn.
Nigel Martyn was possibly the only keeper who cost Palace a lot of money – the first million pound keeper – and was really good. He formed part of the core side that kept Palace in the top division for four seasons.
Palace had attempted to do something similar almost ten years early, when we splashed out for Arsenal’s reserve keeper Paul Barron. Barron had been intended as Pat Jennings replacement at Arsenal, but Jennings seemed to keep going forever.
So Barron and his spectacular blond perm came to Selhurst to replace the popular but ageing John Burridge in 1980. Barron arrived just in time to be part of the club’s self-destruction and he drifted off to West Brom in time. The veteran Burridge was still around a decade later playing for Newcastle in a scary play-off game against Sunderland.
Barron was an exception. Normally we have been on the look-out for the quirky, inexpensive foreign keeper, or someone cheap and grateful.
In addition to Kiraly and his baggy grey trackie bums, among our quirky foreign keepers, was Alex Kolinko, hero of Estonia or was it Latvia. Kolinko was a good shot-stopper but had the worrying trait of appearing permanently terrified. Perhaps Croydon was a little too scary after growing up in the comfort of Soviet Union.
The longest serving of the cheap and grateful group was veteran George Wood. Wood was a dour Scotsman, who struggled over several seasons in the mid-eighties to gain any rapport with the crowd.
He perfected a move where he would applaud the crowd as he jogged to the goal at the start of the game without the slightest intention of making eye contact with anyone.
He appeared to share the crowd’s despair about the awful football we were normally watching, and has passed joylessly out of Palace history.
Wood, however, was not the most unpopular keeper in Palace history. That fate falls to pantomime villain and alleged imbiber of many pies, Kevin Miller.
Like Paul Barron before him, and Julian Speroni afterwards, Miller just happened to be the keeper in situ when Palace fell apart. While Barron kept his head down and his perm beautifully in place, and Jules joined the fans in manning the barricades to help save the club, Miller seemed to want out, and was accused of giving up in the infamous 6-0 final day thrashing at Loftus Road.
And so we welcome Steve Mandanda, born in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, not quite as exotic than St Austell in Cornwall, but there you go.
