January 19 2014

Chamakh and Bolasie poised to attack Stoke City's goal

Football's a funny old game, Jason - Jamesey returns to Selhurst Park for the visit of Stoke City.

It must be said that football supporters in general aren't renowned for their magnanimity and generosity of spirit, so it was an unusual experience to hear visitors and home supporters both singing "There's only one Tony Pulis" (Jan 18).

After nearly 10 years in the Potteries Tony Pulis took Stoke up and kept them in the top drawer and was mysteriously sacked last summer. The reasons were never made explicit but apparently the chairman wanted to bring a more attractive style of football to the Britannia Stadium.

The man appointed to bring about this transformation was Tony's fellow Welshman Mark Hughes. Like many Palace supporters, I was initially dubious about Pulis, but having watched the way he has handled matters in SE25, I know which one of the pair I'd choose to lead us. As Kevin Bacon says in that nauseating commercial for mobile phones, "It's a no-brainer".

So hard cheese, Stoke, and top marks Potters fans for their loyalty and appreciation of a job well done by TP.

As has become the norm this season regardless of the glamour or fame of the opposition, Selhurst was pretty well full with a crowd of 24,440.

The first half was a scrappy affair to be honest although looking back to our FA Cup draw with the Potters last season it was encouraging to see us looking like the better side instead of second-tier hopefuls against Premier thoroughbreds.

Again, unlike last season, Stoke's Peter Crouch looked ineffective compared with the threat he had posed in the Cup game. It has been widely speculated that Crouchy is not rated by Hughes and would be a target for Pulis. It would be fascinating to see how he could fit in to the current Eagles set-up.

Early in the second period came the moment we had all been hoping for when Jason Puncheon snapped up what would be the winning goal.

Punch's penalty miss against Tottenham at White Hart Lane the previous week has been the subject of much derision. Naturally all players sometimes miss penalties but the scale of the miss was indeed spectacular. To say that the player was transformed from villain to hero in an instant would be a gross overstatement but the beam on the Puncheon face demonstrated his relief and pleasure when the ball hit the Stoke net.

And that was how it stayed, with the Eagles very much on top as they had been in the first half. This supporter can't remember deriving so much pleasure from a 1-0 victory (apart from the play-offs final in Wembley last May) in many a year.

The end of a perfect afternoon was to see that most of the other results went our way and from bottom of the pile at 3pm, we moved up several places to 16th a couple of hours later.

It would have been good to build on a fine job of work by doing the same thing against Hull next Saturday but, of course, there is the matter of an FA Cup fixture against holders Wigan. If our Old Academy Boy, Ben Watson, is playing I just hope his free kicks and corner taking are as appalling as they were when he played for us.

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

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