Football is a fickle business as we all know. One day you're celebrating a fantastic 2-3 away win and next your manager resigns. Palace fans of any age will know this more than most. For all my life (supporter since '78, we've been losers. Losing to Man U in the FA Cup. Losing Premiership / Div One status after a year. Losing our best players to bigger clubs. Losing our ground, losing hope and nearly loosing our club, twice.

Ron Noades was made to look decent by the arrival of the seemingly deranged Goldberg who happily drove us into administration. Our knight in shining armour arrived in the shape of mouthy, awful, Simon Jordon, a template for the current crop of clown Premiership chairmen. He also managed to find a way to nearly destroy us. Forget Tan and Allam and have a look at Fulham's website for a fawning piece on Shahid Khan, their ludicrous sugar daddy. Who are these people who buy hundreds of years of history and contaminate it with their egos? I feel for the fans at the likes of Hull, Cardiff and Fulham and even those at the soulless emporiums such as those built in Chelsea.

And here's my point - on 1st June 2010, it all changed thanks to four wealthy fans and those who had the passion to go to Lloyds bank and protest enough for them to sell CPFC2010 the ground.

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Since then we've fired Burnley, we've lost Dougie, we've had the rollercoaster of Holloway (great guy, out of his depth and he admitted it) and the now apparent genius of Pulis. CPFC2010 have admitted to mistakes and corrected them - only Palace's managerial loss this season has been done with grace and dignity, and it shows. And in all of this we have seen an egoless board, a hard headed, business first, football second approach. No talk of bringing in Gazza, making a play for Messi. When we all wanted a 'flair' manager and despaired of boring Pulis coming in, they made the exact right choice. When we complained of only 30% possession, Pulis' team have played the counter attack better than any and our defence is amongst the best.

Through this we've had the arrival of The Ultras - the core of our support. They have the same attitude as the team - no matter what the score we carry on competing. The opposition scores, nothing changes. "One nil and you still can't sing". I started coming regularly again a few years ago and remember hearing them and I thought we had something different now, something steely.

And now I say it is time to believe. Forget worrying about Tan's stupid claim to have his 3 points back because of a text (how embarrassing is that Cardiff fans)? Forget worrying about whether Tony will stay or we'll lose Punch. We know the Arthur Waite is a dump and we have a supermarket embedded into a stand. All these are peripheral matters around what is really important which is the core of our club, the board and the fans are aligned. Simple things like only really having Parish speaking for the club rather than having all four. The fact that he takes time to phone Holmesdale Radio to explain himself.

We are the biggest club in south London. We can easily fill 35,000 every other week. From this and the last few amazing seasons we can push on. I think and believe that we can finally become a solid, entertaining and joined up club. The simple fact is that there is not a club in England, that can look at a fixture with us and think it will be easy. We go into every game believing we can win it because we can. Not only do I love this club, I am really, really proud of it.

So be loud, be proud, be Palace... and let's now dare to believe.

rousing stuff mate.. I concur!

Great post. After the Fulham game we were the butt of every joke and some were saying we were the worst team ever in the Prem. We were in fact a laughing stock. Then a guy in a baseball cap turned up. Nobody is laughing now.

Fantastic post.

*Land of Hope & Glory playing in the background*

Spot on!

And I see signs of half remembered days, I hear bells that chime in strange familiar ways