I have to say I agree with all those sentiments Hambo. Supporters expectations just increase all the time (not just at Palace) and the more of a success we become as a club, the higher the expectation grows. When we won at Wembley, everybody had us down as dead certs for the drop. Most honest Palace fans probably believed this - I know I did. I just wanted to make the most of our experience in the top flight however short they may be. I just didn't want to see us humiliated week in week out and even though we struggled to get points on the board early doors we ticked the box of not being humiliated in those opening games.

Then after a managerial change we not only competed in games for 90 minutes, we actually won them and before long we had beaten the lowest ever points tally ever recorded and more importantly we got ourselves into the mix, catching the other struggling teams up. Because of this the genral expectation seems to be to now spend loads of millions and risk undoing all the good work we have achieved thus far.

If nothing else we need to learn from the mistakes of the last transfer window. We now have that fighting spirit back that Holloway felt we lost in the dressing room. When I saw that Wilbraham was on the bench at the weekend my intial reaction was probably one of major surprise and horror if I am honest. But then he came on and did a magnificent job for the team - played to his strengths just like he did in the play offs. This someone that has been frozen out all season so far. He showed us the team spirit that still exists.

We have to be so careful not to lose our identity and what Palace is all about. Yes we have a fantastic chance of staying up now, one I really never believed we would have after 8 games or so. But the wrong signings could ruin all of the good work that is happening, just as well as the costs could have major implications too if the fees are not right. We just have to trust the powers that be to get it right. Pulis strikes me as a man that will have his say and lets be honest none of us know for sure what goes on behind closed doors. I still have confidence that the guys in charge know what they are doing and whatever happens in this transfer window, we will be far stronger come May then we were last season.

I am as guilty as the next of checking SSN constantly and here for further developments, and I am hoping we do sign a player or two to compliment what we have. That said I would rather leave all that to the experts. For know lets assume no news is good news and see where we are on the 1st February.

Hand on heart - how many of us expected to be sitting out of the relegation places with 20 points at this stage of the season. I certainly didn't!

Good post...agree with pretty much all of it. I do think para 1 above is absolutely right on the money. On the other para, I'm sure there'd be a lot of debate about who, exactly, the spoiled brats were and you'd find some of them in agreement with your sentiment, missing the fact that the joke was on them in the first place.

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.

I'm pretty sure Pulis said at the end of December that we needed to do our business early but as there's about a week to go and no one has come in I'm a little concerned that we don't act like we did in the summer. Personally I'd prefer no one to come in than do mad dash deals on the final day for anyone and everyone that is willing to come to us. Surely we had targets before the window opened and some to fall back on? It seems we are now trudging through the Championship for some half decent buys...if there are any?

Oddly enough the deals that we did on deadline day were probably better than most of the ones down earlier in the closed season with Adrian Mariappa, Barry Bannan, Adlene Guedioura and Jack Hunt being signed plus Cameron Jerome on loan and four of those five have played a big part in our revival this season whereas the 482 signed earlier in the window have been less involved apart from Chamakh and Jason Puncheon

I would rather hear nothing at all and sign the odd one or two players that will bring quality in without other clubs getting wind of it and beating us to it.

TP has said that it's proving to be difficult.

No one knows what will happen, we could sign no one, play badly and be down by the end of March. We could sign no one, FFS come back and be the next Lambert and keep us up. We could sign quality and still go down. Who knows?

I work with Arsenal, Man Utd and Everton fans. At the beginning of the season before we played any games I was the butt of all the jokes and I proudly stuck by my beloved team. Now the same people are telling me how well we're playing and they think and hope we will stay up. So it would be nice to bring quality in but we're not doing to shabby as it is.

We're in the Prem and we love Palace. If we're in the Championship next year we'll still love Palace so smile .

Why would anyone chose to be a Seagull? The Eagle is a far superior creature.

The Seagull lives under it's damp pier meekly looking out, blinded by the sheer quality of the Eagle's palace.

Getting here was lucky to some degree staying will take more. Pulis has to be sound judgement as was Ollie both have track records of doing what we wanted. Buying early was always going to be a tough/impossible task at our end of the market with so much competition from higher wage payers i think 2010 are doing the right thing any panic buys may cost us the one thing we can not lose team spirit.