August 21 2009

Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace against Newcastle. A pairing not often found amongst the league fixtures over the last 20 years, writes Simon Pophale.

In fact, we have only met six times since the inception of the Premier League and prior to that, the last league meeting was back in 1983/84, the season before Steve Coppell arrived.

So it is with great anticipation that we welcome those from the Geordie Nation this Saturday. However, looking at the previous meetings, we should all be hoping that we can change our fortunes against those in black and white.

Our last match was possibly one of our most successful. In our failed attempt to retain our Premiership status in April 2005, we drew 0-0 at St James' Park.

The match marked Alan Shearer's 500th appearance and some players from that match, notably Shola Ameobi, will have to be kept an eye on in the latest instalment this Saturday.

Back in 2004 at Selhurst Park, we matched the Magpies for nearly 80 minutes before we conceded two late goals, one being a Patrick Kluivert back heel and a Craig Bellamy finish almost on the whistle.

Palace's best chance fell to ANDY JOHNSON, who saw Shay Given push his effort over the bar just before half-time. It was another one of those matches when we should have taken something, but didn’t. How costly that was in the end for us.

Our next stop takes us back to the disastrous 1997/98 season. Despite managing not to win a match at home until April, we had a great away record and one of the wins that we got on the road was at St James' Park in March as we emerged with a 2-1 win.

Two men who had short careers but endured long in the memory scored our goals, as Attilio Lombardo and Matt Jansen put us 2-0 up before half-time. Alan Shearer getting the sole Geordie reply.

The home match the previous November saw us lose yet again at home, this time 2-1 with our goal coming from Neil Shipperley, but goals on the stroke of half-time from Jon-Dahl Tomasson and midway through the second half from Temuri Ketsbaia saw the points go back north.

Back in the 1994-1995 season, yet another relegation season for us saw Newcastle do the double by winning 1-0 at Selhurst and with us needing a win and a whole bunch of miracles to stay up, we narrowly lost 3-2 at St James Park which saw our relegation confirmed.

It was the last season that 22 teams competed in the Premiership and the bottom four teams went down. With Aston Villa getting the point they needed, guess who finished 18th? Any other season, we would have been safe.

The cups have provided little joy also, as we met Newcastle in the FA Cup in 2002, 1999 and in 1988. All of the matches were in the third round and all ended up with Newcastle victories at St James Park.

It has been a long time since we got a home win against the Toon so now would be a good time to start. January 21, 1984 was the last time Selhurst saw a Palace victory by 3-1, our biggest win against the Magpies.

Darren Ambrose was born a month later, and as he has been in rich form, maybe he can lead us to victory over his former employers?