I hear what your saying but it has nothing to do with Palace, it is sport in general. Sport needs live fans.

Modern football is a series of unpleasant reminders of something that's always been true: however much we might love the game, we don't own it.

We know it. They know it. They know we know it.

That's why we get such thrilling developments as...

Ticket prices increasing in gross disproportion to average income levels. Its one thing to ask me to pay for the post-Taylor report redevelopment of neglected grounds, but to subsidise three quarters of the players in the Premier league earning more in a week than I do in a year? Cap ticket prices at £20 and £10 for kids, and let the players struggle along on twenty or thirty grand a week.

Kick off times whenever they f***ing like. There is literally not a time too unfair,just so they can have football on TV every minute of every day. I love football but who exactly asked for it to be on TV this much?

The professional acceptance of diving. Just because there's contact doesn't mean they aren't throwing themselves to the floor, and I don't need a former England captain on match of the day telling me Kane/Son/Zaha/Salah/whoever had 'The right to go down there'. f*** off Shearer. I want to watch a sporting contest between committed strong athletes. If I wanted to watch people pretend they were hurt I'd sit through WWF wrestling. If you want to see top flight footballers play like men these days then you have to watch a women's game.

Political posturing. The Premier league and its broadcast partners throw themselves blindly behind blm, but have literally f*** all to say when corrupt human rights abusing states use football clubs to sportswash their reputation. The Manchester City manager wears a yellow ribbon to support Catalan politicians imprisoned in Spain and not one of the weasels asks him how exactly he thinks his paymasters run their country. Then a state who frequently torture and kill their own (when they're not too busy funding islamist terrorism) wants to buy Newcastle and they only fail the fit and proper persons test because they host knock-off streams of Premier league games. Yeah I think I'll get my moral guidance elsewhere thanks.

VAR. Honest to christ, why is this OK?

The golden thread through all this is simple: They decide its OK. We get lumbered.

Yep - I remember that too. I turned up with my girlfriend of 7 weeks. Must have been good as I proposed 3 weeks later.
Now married 40 years. She has never been to another match and no interest in football.

Well, nobody. But the TV companies had an idea that people might be willing to pay for live televised matches so they provided it (the "product"!) and have been proved right. If people weren't willing to pay for live TV football, it wouldn't exist. I don't have it - not for any principled reason, but simply because I'm only interested in seeing one team and I can't be bothered. The thought of watching matches and inane, pontificating experts four days a week depresses me.

Or buying the Evening Standard Classified on the way home

April 2010, Palace v Leeds. A win sees us basically safe from relegation to League 1. Decide to bring the new gf (and still current, I should add) to Selhurst. Danns scores early, 1-0 win, happy days.
What does she say when we get to our seats? 'Is this all the fans you got?' OK shes Spurs, but that comment didn't go down well...