For 36 years I have claimed that I supported Palace because they were my local team. The Big man's passing has made me realise that he was the real reason. Joining the early choruses of EEEAAGGLLES, loving the kit, relishing every headline...it was Malcolm Allison's doing.

As one poster wrote, the original 'Eagle Has Landed'.

Thank you Big Mal for 36 years of bleeding red and blue.

Spirit of 1974

It was my happiest time as a Palace supporter during the Allison era.

As Coach, Malcolm was years ahead of everyone in football.

His character, personality and enthusiasm, lifted our Club to
a level never experienced before or after.

Rest in peace, Great Man!

Very sad news but brings back great memories. I used to stand in the enclosure in front of the Directors box where Big Mal used to sit. He always enjoyed a bit of banter with us fans including the resident moaner who seemed to spend most of his time shouting at certain players and Mal, despite this, come the Xmas match Mal shouted at this guy as he was lighting a roll up and threw him one of his cigars instead! Magic moment, the guy was speechless!
RIP Big Mal

Stanzerman

It was never a dull moment with Mal at the helm, Cup semi final, relegations, foreign players brought in, Fiona Richmond, playing a sweeper system etc etc., and all the while Mal in his fedora,cigar in one hand and champagne glass in the other.

Remember all that apart from the "foreign players" . Bert Head already brought Borge Thorup and Per Bartram from Denmark - via Morton - bt they didn't last long. Who did Mal bring in?

But even so a great character, better forget his second stint though...

PS what happened to Fiona Richmond? Is she still around, or now tucked up with Mal on a big white cloud somewhere?

If Malcolm was a genius coach (as many people are fond of mooting), it certainly never showed at Palace where we went downwards and sideways but never really up. As a marketer (hardly what he was hired to do) he had extraordinary foresight and you could probably construct an argument that he was one of the very first people anywhere to grasp the commercial potential of the "football club as brand entity."

As a football man, he had an intuitive grasp of the importance of building from within, and was a shrewd, if not flawless, judge of young players. Which is just as well. In the transfer market his record was uneven at best.

As a man-manager, he was the sort of boss who earned the love and respect of his staff, but who fell a little bit short of being tactically good enough to take them over the top.

He was also a difficult, egotistical man who wasn't able to get the best out of anyone who didn't fit into his particular jigsaw. One of the reasons we never quite got there under Mal was his lack of flexibility...he could only do it his way and, of course, life sometimes demands compromise. He couldn't get the best out of, or work with, players who didn't fall for him.

Mal was a visionary and he was far ahead of his time. But I would put him in the same bracket as someone like Jimmy Hill. He was a football entrepreneur who was bigger than any one role; his real impact was not as a player, manager, or coach but on the sum of the parts rather than any one part itself.

I'm not sure he'll be universally missed, but he won't be forgotten and he certainly delivered many happy days. A lot of revisionist history and rose tinted glasses have merged over the past week; even as a diamond, he was a flawed one.

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.