May 29 2013

Wembley Way - and beyond

Jamesey looks back on the strange season of 2012-13 which waxed and waned in intensity but ultimately ended in Wembley triumph and promotion to the Premier League.

May 27 granted this senior citizen two vital wishes - a trip to Wembley to see a meaningful game (and did we get that in trumps in our 1-0 play-offs final defeat of Watford) and at least one more season (if I am spared!) playing the elite of English football.

Let's take a scenario. Small football club claws its way back from possible closure and in three years wins a place in the top tier. A home-grown starlet (playing his last game in red and blue) wins a penalty which is converted by a veteran twice his age against one of his old clubs. Job done. Would you believe that? Of course not, but it happened.

I was at the old Wembley in '96 (lost) and '97 (won) (I didn't travel to Cardiff in '04) and I honestly can't remember anything like the noise and intensity of belief among the throngs of Eages supporters. It really was something else (as we old jazzers used to say).

But the course of football never runs smooth and the season's start was less than spectacular.

Unlike August 2011 when Britain was being rocked by looting and rioting in its main cities, the following year had a totally different vibe.

With the exception of English and British football, it had been a wonderful time for home-grown sport as the nation hosted the Olympic Games and not only made a resounding success of it but won stacks of medals too.

So at least the national mood was happy and optimistic as another football season kicked off and Eagles fans wondered what was in store for them.

For once we opened our league campaign at home and our old sparring partners from north of the river, Watford, travelled down to Selhurst on a blisteringly hot August afternoon.

When it looked like we had secured all three points we gave away two late goals and lost the match 2-3. Not a very auspicious start and being sucker-punched in the dying moments of a game was something that was a little too frequent for comfort later in the season.

We lost our next two away games and were booted out of the league cup by a lower division team, Preston North End. Things weren't looking too promising.

In our second home game against Sheffield Wednesday, matters were set to improve in no uncertain fashion.

Manager Dougie Freedman sent out a new-look team which included Andre Moritz and Yannick Bolasie. The whole team played with spirit and purpose and Glenn Murray's brace won us the game, 2-1, and signalled the striker's intention for the many more that would follow.

Even better was our next fixture when we travelled to the Valley and turned over Charlton 0-1 and we looked like adding another victory to our tally when Forest came to town. Regrettably conceding another late goal for a 1-1 result meant sharing the points. But after losing 3-0 every time in our previous three meetings against the Reds, a draw was not exactly a catastrophe.

We started to soar up the league table with four wins on the trot (two home and two away). We were all feeling somewhat dizzy with this phenomenal surge in form, so in late October it was disappointing not to defeat the old enemy Millwall at Selhurst. A 2-2 draw had to suffice.

Shortly after this came one of the shocks of the season - manager Dougie Freedman had decided to move north-west to Bolton Wanderers. Millions of words were written speculating about why a former Palace player hero had decided to go and we still don't really know why. Of more immediate concern was to find an adequate replacement.

On an early November morning we learned that our new boss was to be Ian Holloway and he made an appearance at Selhurst to see us beat Blackburn Rovers 2-0.

Opinions, as ever, would differ about Ollie, some thinking he was just a media manipulator with no real tactical nous. Time would tell.

We were still flying high in the league table a 3-0 home defeat of Brighton was manna from heaven. But December was not a good month with no wins at all and our top table form was looking like a distant memory.

New Year's Day brought some relief when Wolves were the visitors. A 3-1 victory at least kept us in the play-offs hunt although it was disappointing that our form had crumbled after the autumn glories we had seen. The Wolves victory was embellished by a little Brazilian brilliance from Andre Moritz who banged in two magical free kicks. The result left us third in the table behind Cardiff and Hull who both, of course, went on to grab the two automatic promotion places.

Next came a little light relief in the form of the FA Cup and we were handed an attractive home tie against Loadsacash League boys, Stoke City. It was good to see a couple of big names in Stoke shirts at Selhurst - Michael Owen and Peter Crouch were well past their considerable best but both showed a hint of why they were once top players.

A 0-0 draw against the Potters meant a trip up to the Britannia where they hadn't lost a game all season.They duly didn't lose one against Palace and we were soundly beaten and sent home again after a 4-1 defeat.

Meanwhile in the league we were struggling again, with two away losses and a 0-0 draw with Dougie Freedman's new outfit, Bolton Wanderers. There was much speculation on the sort of reception Dougie would get from his old club and from where I was sitting the word "muted" comes to mind.

February saw us host one of our old rivals, Charlton Athletic, and although we were plain awful in the first half we managed to find some form in the second period and beat the Addicks 2-1, thus doing the double against the lads from the unhappy Valley.

A couple of nice wins against Middlesbrough and Bristol City cheered us all up somewhat and another six points against Derby County and Hull City put us well back in the promotion frame again.

A home point against Leeds United wasn't the end of the world but the wheels really came off big time in the middle of March. Three defeats in a row followed, including a humiliating 3-0 result away to Brighton and a horrible 0-4 stuffing from Birmingham City at Selhurst.

A succession of nondescript draws and defeats were beginning to jeopardise even a play-offs place which would have been heartbreaking after such a barnstorming season overall. Fortunately our promotion rivals all had the jitters too so we didn't plummet down the table as alarmingly as we could have done.

When it came to the last league game of the season on May 4 against Peterborough we hadn't won a game since March 5 against Hull, and nerves were jangling at Selhurst. Nevertheless we won the match 3-2, sending the Posh down and ending at 5th in the league table and two play-off legs against who else but Brighton.

The first leg was a disappointing 0-0 at home which one assumes would have been pleasing to Seagulls manager Gus Poyet as they probably expected to win the second leg on the south coast. But two superb goals from Wilfried Zaha saw Crystal Palace book a passage to Wembley for a very big game indeed against Watford.

For a happy ending, return to paragraph one...

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

In Depth Jamesey's Veteran View Index