December 2 2014

Steve Parish (Photo: Andy Roberts)

Steve Parish isn't your run of the mill chairman, writes Paul Ellison.

Amidst all the talk of a possible multi-million pound takeover at Palace it's easy to lose sight of the fantastic job that Parish and his boardroom colleagues have been doing.

Palace are quietly turning themselves from a yo-yo club into a Premiership force to be reckoned with. Parish has even been talking up Palace's chances of making the Europa League this season.

Fans talk about successful sides being built from the back, but those within the game tend to talk in more corporate terms about success being generated behind the scenes, on the training ground, in the manager's office and - most importantly of all - in the boardroom.

Co-ordinating all those different elements of the club is the not-so-secret trick behind getting successful side on the park.

And that is something that Parish is sharply aware of. It is also something that the likes of betfair take notice of as they lengthen the odds on a Palace relegation scenario and start to mark them up as likely top half candidates.

Talking to Mihir Bhose in the Evening Standard recently and reflecting on criticism of Neil Warnock, Parish was quick to stress that he runs a united backroom team, "I don't say when a manager loses, 'he's rubbish, I'm brilliant'," he said, "I picked him. How can you cop out of that as a chairman? It seems bizarre.

"If a manager's not performing, I think it's all my fault."

That sort of team ethic runs though the chairman's every utterance. Playing down all the recent talk over a possible takeover by American businessman Joshua Harris, Parish was keen to stress that his first priority was the good of the club, irrespective of his own - and his fellow board members' - personal ambition.

As he told the Standard, "If somebody came in and said here's £150 million for players in a new stadium, as a fan of the club what right have I got to say, ‘Sorry, me and my mates [Martin Long, Stephen Browett and Jeremy Hosking] absolutely love doing this. We're quite happy down in the bottom half of the Premier League if it's all the same to you."

There is no denying that Parish makes a convincing advocate for the club. Whilst playing down his own role he has insistently pushed the case for recognising Palace as a club on the point of a significant breakthrough.

He regularly points to the financial make-up of the Premier league as enabling a fair distribution of revenues, just as he points to the success enjoyed by clubs such as Southampton who are proving that it does not take a huge stadium and a fan-base of millions to challenge the big boys out on the pitch.

And backing up the positive talk Parish continues to push ahead to redevelop Selhurst Park into a 30,000 capacity stadium.

Whilst that would undoubtedly make the club a more attractive proposition to any potential buyers, that consideration is not something that Parish is too concerned about.

He's talking about being around for the next ten years. If he is, who knows where Palace may be then?