The only real method of protesting is to organise a campaign that has impact - Owners don't really care too much about chants from a few malcontents - plus you're still buying tickets and season tickets.

Businesses generally make decisions based on financial impact. Protests should be targeted at Televised games for example. You need to be organised, numerous, and use the media in advance (because if your in the ground complaining you're paying). Local and rival broadcasters are much more likely to cover a protest than Sky - and the protest has to really be such that it distracts from the 'broadcast experience' of the fan at home. Because what you should be doing is creating a situation where the broadcaster doesn't want to cover you teams games.

If your buying tickets and complaining about the 'owners' you're really contradicting yourself. You have to understand that the Owners and the Club are the same thing.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

I can understand why a casual observer may think that. The headline grabbing success of the year we finished 5th obscures the seasons that followed. The scorelines, the Match of the Day highlights and the history books don't go into detail about the quality of football and 12th looks very much like 15th at the end of a season. But Pardew had us flirting with relegation, took us on our worst run of form in decades, lost successive derbies, made inexplicable tactical choices, substitutions and his behaviour off the pitch was even worse. Headbutting a player, calling a respected manager swearwords that this site will filter out, and so on.

Do I think the protests had a negative effect on the morale of some of the mercenaries? Yeah, probably, but we needed to change something because if we didn't nothing would change. The players who understood that this wasn't good enough were shipped out (Barton, Nolan, Enrique) or treated appallingly (Jonas, R.Taylor) by the club.

It's easy to say the protests lead to our relegation, but that's just not anywhere near a full picture.

I agree that it's hard to oust an owner from the club, but if the owner is committed to the club, as yours are, they'll listen to the crowd's call for change of (or at least some accountability for) the manager.

Charlton showed you can protest even after you've got your tickets with tennis balls and inflatables, didn't they?

Sounds like a circus!

Well Pardew is an experienced manager, with some very good pedigree, who's history tends towards runs of form, and you were sitting 10th I believe. The fact you could lose your manager to a club that was bottom and nailed on for relegation, with an on paper worse squad, lower profile and less capital, suggests that had Pardew been more popular, he might well have stayed, or at least been offered the money.

I think its a very valid, rather than absurd argument, provided one allows for hindsight, as it displays the often myopic and uninformed emotional nature of football fans, and how irrational they are.

Football fans, for some reason, have a preponderance to the idea that any change is better than the problem they perceive, without rationally addressing the problem and trying to ascertain if there is even really a problem.

They also have a tendency towards 'bias' in their evidence. Last season, in THE LEAGUE, we were poor from December onwards, but we also had an incredible FA Cup run in which the weakest opponent was Reading, a club that has a very impressive recent FA Cup form - The rest were premiership teams.

Coppell, the last manager to take Palace to an FA Cup final, had a much much easier cup run.

But when you listen to fans, they'll tell you the bits that support their case, and wilfully ignore the contributory factors. Injuries, the FA Cup and the fact that the preceding 12 months were possibly the best 12 months that the club has ever had.

You'd think to listen to some, we 'were lucky to avoid relegation'. When in fact we never even came close. Certainly there was cause for concern, but effectively we'd done enough to stay up by Dec 12th.

So that's why its relevant and not absurd, its because its rational to consider that getting shot of a manager after one game of the season, isn't even remotely for rational reasons.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

I thought he'd given you five years in the Premier league while you got relegated either side of him being in charge? I thought he'd won manager of the year during that too?

As for calling a respected manager a few things. It's not like Mourinho, Wenger and Ferguson etc have done that is it?

You didn't even succeed in having him sacked. He walked out on you, and it's no surprise to anyone why.

Optimistic as ever