August 4 2002

Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace have agreed a fee with Brentford for defender DARREN POWELL and hope to finalise personal terms within the next 24 hours.

Trevor Francis confirmed the 26-year-old defender was set to sign for £750,000 as partner to Tony Popovic. Kit Symons will miss the first part of the season due to straining his groin during pre-season.

Trevor Francis told BBC London Live's Tom Watt at the Palace Open Day: "Well, I like my two centre-halves to be strong defensively in the air, because I think that it's vitally important that you head the ball well all over the field, especially in defensive areas.

"And he does come and attack the ball very well. He's a huge guy, he's not quite the size that you said he is, but he's 6’ 3, and for one who is so big he's also got excellent pace. If you look along the back four, we're not exactly blessed with great pace.

"We've got good defenders, but I think that when you've got that kind of pace it enables you to hold a higher line, and condense the play a bit more than what we're doing at the moment.

"So I think that while Kit Symons is out of the picture, if we were able to bring in DARREN POWELL, it would prove to be a good acquisition.

"I've watched him a couple of times myself, this pre-season, and of course my first team coach Terry Bullivant used to work with him at Brentford.

"I think it's always good when you've actually worked with someone, you know their strengths and weaknesses, and certainly Terry has been very complimentary in his assessment on DARREN POWELL."

POWELL signed for the Bees in 1998 and was voted player of the year in his first season and has gone from strength to strength.