May 26 2015

Jason Puncheon squares up for a shot on the Swans goal

Swansea City brought a sizeable crowd from south Wales for the last game of the '14-15 Premier season. But they were disappointed and Jamesey witnessed a spirited 1-0 win for Crystal Palace.

It was a day (May 24) to savour but with a tringe of sadness.

Every football lover feels a pang of regret at the season's end, especially in a year with no summer Euros or World Cup.

On the other hand, Palace supporters could hardly fail to be delighted after a campaign which ended on a high note that didn't look at all likely in the bleak mid-winter.

As chef de cuisine in the Jamesey household, before I left for the match, I dusted off our tagine dish for a Sunday chicken dinner with a Moorish flavour.

And who should pop up to score the winning goal against the Swans but Palace's Moroccan striker, Marouane Chamakh? A lovely North African coincidence...

Interestingly, the game once might have been regarded as a clash between a couple of minor minnows, well out of their depth in the Premier League. At the final whistle, Swansea and Palace were 8th and 10th, respectively, in the Bagsodosh League - not exactly small-fry positions.

Palace started the game with all guns blazing and were by far the best team but the inability to finish any moves prompted Alan Pardew to send on the man with the Midas touch when it comes to opportunist goals, naturally Glenn Murray.

Even so we had to wait until the second half before Chamakh lashed in the winner to send all CPFC fans home happy.

However, it wasn't a league season which started off very merrily with the walk-out of manager Tony Pulis before the first ball was kicked.

So our first game of the season was away to Arsenal and it was no great disgrace to be defeated 2-1 at the Emirates. This was followed by a home match with West Ham and the manager-less Eagles lost 1-3 to the confident-looking East Londoners.

To most people's surprise, in late August, Palace appointed Neil Warnock as manager, his second period since his departure to QPR in the chaotic administration time of 2010. Many felt that he would be out of his depth in the top tier but Steve Parish and his co-directors felt that quick action was essential and that Neil was the man to steady the ship. Time would, of course, tell.

Two draws followed and we had to wait until late September for our first win, which was a lovely 3-2 victory away to Everton. This was followed by a home win against Leicester which lifted us to the giddy heights of 9th. In the meantime we were knocked out of the League Cup by Newcastle so that was one issue less to worry about.

However, optimism was somewhat misplaced as in the next five games we lost four and drew one. When we lost 1-0 to Man Utd in early November, we were one place above the relegation zone. Things were not looking at all good.

Then, towards the end of November something happened to gladden the hearts of all Eagles supporters. On a memorably miserable Sunday when the rain bucketed down, the trains were all to cock and later all the roads in south London seemed gridlocked, the mighty Liverpool came to Selhurst.

If you felt down when you got to the ground, you felt lower than whale poo (and that's at the bottom of the ocean) after a couple of minutes when Ricky Lambert scored a sitter. We feared the worst but the team dug in and Dwight Gayle equalised before half time.

If we thought that was good, better was to come. Two goals in three minutes towards the end of the game brought a 3-1 win for the Eagles.. A very famous victory for Palace and a couple of points up the table safer.

The run-up to Christmas started with a fortuitous draw at Swansea but all were hoping for a nice home win against a weak Aston Villa side. Although we dominated the game Villa grabbed the points with a 1-0 victory.

Two more draws followed but the crunch came on Boxing Day when Southampton came to Selhurst and soundly stuffed the Eagles 3-1. For the first time since August Palace slumped into the bottom three.

The warning alarms were obviously sounding in the CPFC boardroom that action needed to be taken on the managerial front. Was Neil Warnock way out of his depth in the top echelon? The board certainly thought so and the following day it emerged that Neil had been given his marching orders.

Prime candidate for the Palace hot seat was our old friend Alan Pardew who had been having a troubled time at Newcastle with an eccentric chairman and a largely hostile fan base.

We older supporters remembered Pards as a useful Palace squad midfielder in the late '80s. It would have been difficult for any player to stand out in a team with men of the calibre of Ian Wright, Mark Bright and Geoff Thomas and Pards' main claim to fame was scoring that winning goal against Liverpool at Villa Park and taking us to a Wembley FA Cup Final.

He did, nevertheless, go on to forge a creditable career as a manager and had wide experience of the top division,

The wisdom of taking on another former player as manager was doubted by some and memories of Steve Kember and Peter Taylor were still painful.

But the board went for it and Pards got the job, starting with an FA Cup tie at non-league Dover which Palace unsurprisingly won 0-4.

The first real test of the new gaffer's reign was home to Tottenham and the Eagles showed the new man what they were made of with a stunning 2-1 win which elevated the club out of the drop zone.

Then came an away win at Burnley and another FA Cup victory at Southampton.

With two Cup and two league wins in succession this was a remarkable start to the new regime and with mid-table respectability, the clouds of gloom were lifting a little in SE25.

However a home 0-1 defeat by Everton soon brought a whiff of reality back to the situation.

A win and a draw came next and an exit from the Cup courtesy of Liverpool and a 1-2 home defeat to Arsenal.

A win away to West Ham was a treat but the Saints did the season double on Palace with a 1-0 win at St Mary's.

Then in March and April, a remarkable sequence of four straight wins surely made any Pardew doubters blush?

Queen's Park Rangers, Stoke, Manchester City and Sunderland were all put to the sword and an 11th place in the table surely meant another season in the Showusthemoney league.

Well, you can't win 'em all and we duly didn't win any of the next four matches. Home defeats by West Bromwich Albion and Hull City were rather hard to stomach, especially in view of the pleasure that would have been gained with wins over Tony Pulis and Steve Bruce.

As we cruised into May and the tail-end of the season an away loss to league champions, Chelsea, was no disgrace and they could only do it with an Eden Hazard penalty.

The Manchester Utd game, in all honesty, could have gone either way and it is surely a sign of how far CPFC has come on in the past couple of years that we could play elite teams like the Reds and the Blues and not get thoroughly spanked.

So what would our final two games bring? We were safe from relegation so there was only pride and table placings to play for. To climb a couple more placings could bring more cash into the coffers which, with Parish and his colleagues' say-so, could give the boss more to spend in the transfer market.

The day of the penultimate game dawned and where else could it be but Anfield. Not only had the Eagles lost four previous consecutive games but it was the illustrious Steven Gerard's final game for his lifetime club. Thus the humble Eagles were only there as whipping boys and part of the furniture for the ceremony. At least that's what just about everybody thought.

Of course, it didn't turn out like that at all. Liverpool were played off the Anfield park and Palace thoroughly deserved a great 3-1 triumph.

Thus the final day of the season arrived and Palace hosted Swansea.

There is nothing to add to the opening paragraphs of this column on the game itself.

But what a season for the boys from Selhurst - from no-hopers to a Top Ten finish (admittedly helped by other results).

The sight of a grinning Alan Pardew's High Ten to the cheering fans said it all really.

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

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