October 10 2002

Steve Coppell

A Palace icon managing one of our old enemies? Jamesey looks at loyalty and the lessons of history

It's a bit like the Archbishop of Canterbury officiating at a Black Mass. I exaggerate, of course, but the Selhurst faithful hearing of Steve Coppell's appointment as Brighton manager will know what I mean.

Reading some of the reactions on our message boards makes one wonder whether sanity has gone out of the window.

I hope some of the suggestions that Coppell had taken the job in order to wreck BHAFC from the inside were humorous.

Otherwise, anyone who seriously believes such a scenario should get real. To start with let's look at the facts.

Fans are, on the whole, loyal to the club of their choice for a lifetime. Managers and players are only loyal to the club that is currently paying their wages.

Steve Coppell is a professional football manager and his loyalties now lie with Brighton. And while we are on the subject of loyalty, I couldn't believe some of the claptrap I read about Simon Rodger's loyalty to Palace.

I respect Rodger as a journeyman midfielder who served Palace for 12 years. He was not fancied by several of the host of managers who reigned in his time and went out on loan at least twice and was available for a transfer. But no other club wanted him.

Loyalty doesn't come into it. But I digress. In 1984, the unjustly maligned Ron Noades came up with a stroke of genius.

Our club had been going downhill fast since relegation from the old First Division in 1981 - gates were declining and the club looked like nosediving into the never never land.

Uncle Ron took a distinguished 28-year-old ex-Man U and England winger whose career had just ended through injury, with no managerial or coaching experience, and gambled on him as manager.

As we now know, after a faltering start, the gamble paid off in a very big way and Steve Coppell led us to probably the most successful years of our history.

But good as he was at getting us up, he wasn't so good at staying there. When Coppell resigned in 1993, I wrote to him (the only time I have ever written to a Palace manager) begging him to stay on and wishing him well, as did many thousands of supporters.

Our expectations were not so great then, and we appreciated the good years he had given us. As a thoroughly decent man Coppell wrote me a personal reply, as I am sure he did to all the others.To leap through time to the summer of 2000.

Coppell himself was quoted in the press, saying that being manager of a club under administration was a form of paradise.

He had no chairman to keep happy and, despite the obvious financial restraints, he could do pretty well anything he wanted to.

When a certain self-made millionaire and mobile phone mogul used his millions to buy the club, Coppell had enough intelligence to realise he couldn't work with a hands-on, strong-willed chairman who would question every decision and be ultra-critical of any failures.

So he resigned. And there it ended as far I am concerned, I thank Steve Coppell from the bottom of my heart for all the wonderful memories he has given me.

But I wish him extremely bad luck in his new job. It's Trevor Francis who needs the good luck...

Email Jamesey with any of your comments to Jevans3704@aol.com