August 19 2013

Palace defend at Holmesdale end

Jamesey joined a packed and vociferous throng at Selhurst for Palace's first game of '13-14 in the top echelon.

Nobody in their right mind thought it was going to be easy and it certainly wasn't. Despite Tottenham's obvious superiority in quality and talent, the Eagles put on a brave show and at the final whistle it was only a penalty taken by their new signing Roberto Soldado that won them the game on the day (Aug 18).

Soldado cost £26m and without going into the mathematics, would our entire squad reach anything like that?

For this supporter there was a slight feeling of deja vu, remembering events of nine years ago (it can't be can it?) when under the stewardship of Iain Dowie Palace won the play-off final in Cardiff and - as unexpectedly as now - found a place in the Stacksomoulah League.

Our first game in 2004-05 was away to Norwich and a 1-1 draw was a creditable result. However meeting a resurgent Tottenham pushing for Champions League football was a much tougher proposition.

During our best period last season, Glenn Murray, Wilfried Zaha and Yannick Bolasie formed a lethal combination and how thrilling it would have been to see that trio really giving the Spurs defence something to worry about.

But Wilf is gone, Glenn is crocked and is Yannick not in the frame now? Anyhow Dwight Gayle and Stephen Dobbie never looked like a threat of that calibre.

When Ian Holloway brought on a trio of subs - Marouane Chamakh, Jon Williams and Kevin Phillips - in the second half the Eagles looked more like equalising but, of course, it was not to be.

Ollie's aim appears to be fourth from bottom, stay up and build on it next season and even that could be ambitious.when we have to play the elite teams. We must aim to pick up points from the Hulls and West Broms. to survive.

The last time Tottenham visited Selhurst was in January 2005 in the Prem and we won 3-0. I well remember that game because I wrote some very unflattering comments about Spurs (uncharacteristically, I feel). Some mischief maker posted the column on a Tottenham fans website and the poisonous hate mail I received was far worse than the most vitriolic excesses I get from the usual HOL trolls.

As far as the match experience was concerned it was evident that any ground improvements undertaken certainly didn't include the Arthur Wait home supporters area.

The gents lavatory was still stylistically minimalist and retained the pungent aroma of a Tunisian midden.

My beloved Block W wooden seat with its fading rubric "Reserved" from some bygone area stencilled on the back had not been replaced by plastic. As a staunch traditionalist I was delighted to see the lack of "improvements".

What a pleasure it was to see us on "Match of the Day" again that night. Do you know, we looked much better on TV to me than we had done live in the afternoon. Funny that...

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