May 1 2011

Crystal Palace

...we are staying up', was the happy song when the Eagles drew 1-1 with Hull to remain in the second division, reports Jamesey.

Mathematics were never my strongest suit and I've been getting bewildered by all the permutations and possibilities of the Championship drop candidates as the season closes.

At one point on Saturday afternoon (April 30) we appeared to be heading towards our customary away defeat at Hull while Sheffield United were beating Barnsley 2-1. Had those results stayed as they were, our final match at home to Nottingham Forest would have given the Blades a mathematical chance of leapfogging us and putting us down.

But it all came good in the end in the usual bizarre Palace manner. An unknown Academy kid, Ibra Sekkaja, came on with two minutes left, scored the equaliser within a few seconds and, bingo, the Hull game was a draw.

The Blades could only manage a draw, and Scunthorpe got well thumped by Forest, and so, we lived to fight another day in division 2 of the Football League.

So, unlike our nerve-shredding draw with Sheffield Wednesday in May 2010, we will be able to enjoy our final home game against Forest on Saturday (May 7) in party mood and with no relegation angst.

Let's hope next season will see a return to happier times and Dougie Freedman can settle the ship and coax some better away performances from his team. Even an average number of away wins would have seen us in a comfortable mid-table position but, of course, we don't like being average at Selhurst Park.

It will be a Sheffield derby in division 3 next season when the Blades join the Owls and that is a salutary lesson in the fickleness of the football gods.

Never could the old cliche, you're never too big for the drop, be more appropriate than in this instance. To see two clubs with such eminent histories scrabbling around in the third tier is a profound lesson for all of us. Names which once held equal stature with Chelsea and Man U will be playing Brentford and Yeovil and, having travelled to Hillsborough myself a while back, I can't imagine such a majestic and historic stadium hosting such low-calibre events. But there you go.

On the other side of the coin, the Sunday papers are full of the smiling mug of our ex-manager, Neil Warnock.

Subject to a possible points deduction over a transfer rules irregularity, Neil's Queens Park Rangers join the lotsamoulah league as division 2 champions.

When the mercifully departed and totally unlamented Simon Jordan recruited Neil to manage the Eagles, I, for one, was unimpressed. The stage Yorkshireman image and ranting antics seemed quite unfitting for the manager of a proud south London club.

But as time went by, Neil's record on the field and the apparent mellowing of his behaviour, won the vast majority of us over.

When the very existence of CPFC was in jeopardy at the beginning of last year, Neil decided to cross London and manage QPR. His friend Simon was no longer in control and he decided to sail to safer waters at Loftus Road.

Personally I don't blame him although I was sad to see him go.

Although he looks a decade or more younger, he is now 62-years-old, and a couple of years before that, he had been talking about retiring from the game altogether and living in his West Country retreat. I bet he's not thinking about that now...

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

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