I try to compare us to ourselves, have we gotten better is the only question i ask myself.

i'm not interested in other clubs, ofcourse it's nice to be able to attract a player or two that maybe we felt would opt else where - but i do feel we are an attractive club - purely down to london and the quality of the clubs around and those players - you got mates at chelsea, palace is good as an example.

Roy has been tremendous, i have seen us play some excellent football and ofcourse bad, but a lot of clubs we are blinkered too, also do.

I only wish they had significantly backed roy this summer.

This was once a quality forum....

This is all now getting a little confusing. Look at the highlights, we should have been absolutely hammered. Instead we score the goal of the century, and have some belief. Went on to play with heart, and BELIEF!

It's interesting - what makes a 'big' club?

for me, it's a little bit of everything - it's their history, the fan base. Bournemouth are a successful club and doing better than us, are they bigger than us, no!

We're doing better than Newcastle, are we bigger, no. I think it boils down to fanbase, as that is always there and the potential revenue a club can make through sponsorship etc in a way.

This was once a quality forum....

I think that Parish has built a lot of good credit with the fans and rightly so; 2010 saved the club and steered us to the premier league. That said, there has been one particular oversight which, for me, is completely unacceptable: the relative failure of the club to produce quality youth players. AWB is the only premier league standard player for over 6 seasons, yet we (did) have a renowned setup, good history of producing talent and a huge and diverse catchment area.

For me, the job Nicola Cortese did at Southampton should be the model for clubs like palace: invest in youth and use it to build squads and increase revenue through selling on. Instead, we have a massive wage bill for average players, an inability to strengthen without horse trading, and no strength in depth.

Add to all this an obsession with the 'history' of the club centering around the early 90s team which smacks of jobs for the boys and the stadium saga (I personally don't believe we'll ever see a new stand; it'll keep being put back until we're relegated and then binned off) and you've got an unsustainable model based on just doing enough to stay in the division season by season which we've seen with the likes of Fulham and Stoke in the past will always run out eventually.
Roy has his flaws, but is his job the envy of the footballing world? Who is there better, and would they be backed?

Until the setup changes and the model adjusted, any manager that can tread water is in truth doing a fantastic job given the circumstances and, more dishearteningly, is hitting his boardroom targets.

Agree with you totally (bold). I like to try and start with a positive to show a bit of balance, but can't argue with your summary of the events. I find it frustrating that he escapes scrutiny from most Palace fans based on the goodwill built in the first season. The whole Holloway departure played out in public revealed his level in my eyes.

Six years ago Steve Parish was treated with godlike reverence on this forum and could do no wrong. There were three of us who questioned some of the things that he did and said and we were quite severely abused as a result which makes it rather amusing that over the years more and more people have come to realise that Mr P wasn't the re-incarnation of Mother Theresa but a local businessman who saw an opportunity for a fairly risk free venture coupled with an opportunity to raise his personal profile.

I won't comment on his current strategy until the window closes but if he does try to wing it again then I will join the increasing chorus of people suggesting that his time at Palace is up and he should consider selling up