Goldberg was far from being an idiot, having stars in his eyes and being eaten by football sharks, yes.

He made back all the money he lost at Palace, he made it from those late night women in various states of undress on TV getting people to call in on premium phone lines.

Having read through all these great posts, one thing is clear, Uncle Ron was like marmite! I met him a few times over the years, however one meeting I remember only too well.
I was playing golf at one of his 'Palace' funded golf clubs, Happy Valley (Now East Surrey National I think?) I was on the tee off and I could see a JCB on the left of the fairway doing some bunker work. Being the typical golfer I am, my ball drifted towards the JCB in the rough. As I approached where I thought my ball was, Uncle Ron was stood there looking rather irritated giving me that stare. I recognised him immediately and politely asked if he had seen my ball, to which he replied sternly, 'Yes, It nearly hit me' I responded firmly 'If I knew you were standing there I would have aimed for you!' His reply was honest though, he said 'If you were any good you might have succeeded! Anyway, you must be either a Palace or a Brentford fan'
We spent 10 minutes chatting and he was surprisingly honest, especially of his opinion of SJ. I cant repeat the language he used about him.
As a businessman he was very clever and did do some good for the club. Unfortunately he didn't love our club, which was clear with some of his decisions over the years.

Oh, he also cut me up at the roadworks on the M4 coming back from Bristol City away (Friday night Pre season friendly 1-1 I think?!!)

Noades did a lot of harm to Palace and took far more money out of the club that he ever put in but......it was Raymond Bloye his predecessor that sold the land to Sainsbury not Noades.

We did well under Noades because of Steve Coppell not because of Ron Noades. His f*cking about with the freehold says everything. I really gave up on him around 94,95 - I preferred that side to the 90/91 side: Southgate, Coleman, Salako, Gordon, Armstrong etc ... we had half a dozen top players but a few make weights, if we had stumped up the money to keep Paul Stewart (him and Armstrong destroyed the championship the previous season) we were only one or two players from a really good side - top eight of the prem. But there was no intention to grow and improve, it doesn't surprise me he took far more money out of the club than he put in - people like Noades are 'clever' when it comes to business, but have no imagination, where there's brass there's muck.

Noades was a businessman. He was a fairly good one as he made a lot of money.

He is being vilified for taking money out of the club.

No different from any owners including the current gang of Parish and the Yanks.

Clubs are not run like they used to be - owned by a group of locals as part of the local community. They are at our level big business geared to making returns for investors through complex offshore structures to pay as little tax as possible thus maximising income.

When he bought the club for a penny we were in dire straights. He gave Steve Coppell his chance, but we languished at the bottom of the then second division.

Our talisman striker was Kevin Mabbutt who was injury prone, but scored some crucial goals to keep us in the division with crowds averaging 5,500.

He started “ Lifeline” which where the fans could contribute to the purchasing of players. We bought Gary O’Reilly and Mark Bright. I joined and I think it was one of my favourite times of watching Palace.

For that is how I would remember Ron Noades, sure he had an edge to him and said some controversial things, but he was a Palace fan as well as a business man,and that is how he should be remembered.