Bringing back Damo yesterday was key to the improved result.
This brought me to thinking, the key reason for our rollercoaster ride is our inability to replace key-players with like-for-like replacements when they reach the age when performance drops off.

No point in fans complaining about Speroni, Murray, Jedinak and soon Delaney not being picked for the team. What they really want is the players they once were being picked for the team. Clearly cannot be done but the replacements just do not 'replace' the skills that we lose. Hennessey for Speroni, Wickham for Murray, no-one for Jedinak and Tomkins for Delaney. Replacements good but not strong in the same areas as the players they are replacing.

This causes performances to slip until the team adjust and find a new way of competing.

Our recruitment policy is not good enough and I fear for this season if we don't get matching replacements for Delaney and Jedinak in January.

And we should forget this transition nonsense. It's obvious that the tactics of last year failed because we lacked a Benteke up-front. We've got him now so lets get back to doing what we do best.

People forget that when Speroni signed for us, he was almost immediately dropped in favour of Kiraly, who was first choice for 3 years, then Finders was given ago, ahead of Speroni. To his credit Speroni eventually worked his way into the team and was great.
My point is, that not every signing is a success straight away, everybody expects instant returns, it doesn't work that way.
Replacing ageing players is very difficult and a bit of luck is needed.

Exactly my point. People saying bring back Jedi, Murray scoring, bring back Jules. But all now too old and not good enough. They were certainly good enough in their prime.

I don't know who they are but they just turned the bin dippers over.

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The Ferret
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For a start he was able to persuade Jack Wilshire to come on loan rather than Palace and I never said they were stars I just think he has the ability to get better quality players than we are able to attract. Hopefully you saw the game against Liverpool today and the team play is much more tactically sound than ours have been for a long while now with younger, fitter and more committed players.

No he isn't. What that bloke brought to the team was immense. Leadership. Fight and pride in the shirt. You cannot buy that, it has to be found. We need to find that again. And fast.

"We love you Palace, we f@cking hate Man U, We love you Palace, we hate the brighton too, We love you Palace we play in red 'n' blue, so f@ck you, and you ...