January 4 2011

George Burley

Palace's three festive fixtures turned out to be a freeze-up, a cock-up and a cheer-up. Jamesey reports.

Well, at least I haven't missed the Norwich game, scheduled for Boxing Day but held over because of the weather. I spent Christmas with family in darkest Kent but will now have the dubious pleasure of assembling with 8,000 (?) other masochists on a freezing night in February unless, hopefully, a Saturday slot turns up.

Events on New Year's Day barely need repetition. A solid phalanx of Eagles fans turned up at the New Den to see our side well and truly thumped 3-0 by the side we all detest being beaten by.

Almost as the final whistle echo died away we learned that CPFC2010 had decided that George Burley was not the man to lead Palace to the promised land but more likely to take us to the third division. More of all that later in this column.

The total pessimism I felt about our prospects in Bermondsey were turned completely round for our home game against fellow strugglers, Preston North End (Jan 3). This was game it was vital to win to get our bandwagon even creaking again.

And win the match we did although it wasn't pretty, especially in the first half.

It was ironic that the player who George Burley had been stalking, Steffen Iversen, turned in a 22-carat performance and scored the winning goal to boot. George may have needed a few drams of Scotland's finest to get over the bitterness of that.

The second half, particularly the last 20 minutes or so, saw a different Preston emerge. After their lacklustre showing in the first period it was difficult to believe that they were the same team. The North Enders launched attack after attack and even the most loyal Eagles fan must have doubted that we could survive the bombardment and that yet another end-game draw or defeat was on the cards.

Mercifully, the 1-0 scoreline prevailed and relief and joy were unconfined in the Selhurst precinct.

In my last column ("For the record", Dec 30), I wrote about our 1-1 away draw with Bristol City and quoted some statistics which outlined the abysmal quality of our performances in the first half of this season.

To my surprise, the column seemed to cause quite a kerfuffle on the Palace Talk message board.

The malice and venom that seems to typify virtual debate in all areas were there in abundance.

Despite a few kind postings from some, among the insults and hysterical shouting which emerged, I was called "fickle" (55 years a Palace supporter - that's "fickle"?); "old" (guilty as charged) "biased and negative and should be banned from commenting" - what happened to free speech?) and much more of the same.

The word "negative" has been picked up by less articulate people in the same way that "passionate" was a few years ago. While "passionate" was bandied about to mean "screaming obscene abuse" or "standing in front of disabled people and young children", the word "negative" now appears to mean "any view which is critical of CPFC or diverges from the accuser's own thoughts".

Well, Steve Parish, Martin Long and the others members of the consortium must be double "negative" as Mr Burley got his cards within a day or so of my column appearing.

Another interesting point for discussion was the fact that some appear to believe that the only people with the right to talk about a game are the ones who are actually there in person.

Therefore any views I held on the Bristol City game were null and void despite the fact that I had listened to an expert commentary on Palace Player (Danny Granville and a highly professional radio sports journalist) and read literally thousands of words on message boards, internet sites and other sources.

Seems to me I had a pretty good case for commenting on a game although not actually there.

And with that, a Happy New Year to all HOL members, especially the sensible ones...

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

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