Eagles for England: (from left) Eberechi Eze, Marc Guehi, Dean Henderson and Adam Wharton reporting for duty for Gareth Southgate’s Euros training camp yesterday. Crystal Palace have more players in the preliminary squad than any other club
Was that the best finish to a Palace season ever? As four Crystal Palace players sign-in for the England training squad ahead of the Euros, life-long Eagles fan JERRY FITZPATRICK looks at how past stand-out years compare, and offers you the chance to vote for your choice
That over-used word “sensational” truly describes Crystal Palace’s form at the end of the 2023-2024 season.
The elation has been justified, and that is a very rare and precious emotion for Eagles fans. Not just that we beat Liverpool, Manchester United and Newcastle – who were all chasing European football slots – but the way we beat them. Well-organised formation, fast and incisive attacking football and some fabulous goals. We cross our fingers that we can keep Eberechi Eze and Michael Olise in Oliver Glasner’s squad.
If we can, and also strengthen in key areas, maybe playing in Europe ourselves in 2025-2026 is not a fantasy.
But was it the most important end-of-season run in Palace’s proud and occasionally distinguished history?
I think not.
The momentous seasons have been those where we have achieved promotion or suffered relegation. I prefer not to dwell on the latter, although I well recall the misery.
Let’s look at a few benchmarks.
2012-2013
Parting gift: Wilf Zaha’s performances in the play-offs helped Palace into the Premier League, before his transfer to Manchester United
Finishing fifth in the Championship, we reach the play-offs and need to beat two teams which finished ahead of us in the table. First against rivals Brighton over two legs with young Wilf Zaha the star of the show in a 2-0 aggregate victory.
And then Wembley against Watford: at 0-0 the match goes into extra-time. Zaha wins a penalty. Substitute Kevin Phillips slots in the winner from the spot. Our (to date) 12-season run in the Premier League begins. Four in the top-tier had been our previous best. This was a super-significant end-of-season, by any measure.
2000-2001
Club saviour: Dougie Freedman scores against Stockport in May 2001
Dark times.
Recurring financial crises called the club’s very survival into question. We just have to win at Stockport in the final match or we are back in the third tier for the first time since 1977. We miss a hatful of chances and Stockport have some scary near-misses. But in the 87th minute, the ref missing a Palace handball, Dougie Freedman scores a breakaway winner.
Freedman has played for us, managed us and is now a brilliant Sporting Director – a Palace hero.
1988-1989
What a decade earlier had been dubbed “The Team of the Eighties” had actually spent most of the decade in the doldrums of second-tier football.
But now we have shrewd Steve Coppell as our manager and star striker Ian Wright, who the club plucked from park football. If we beat already relegated Birmingham by five clear goals and Manchester City lose on the final day of the season, we have clinched automatic promotion.
Shrewd: manager Steve Coppell with Mark Bright and Ian Wright in 1989
The Birmingham game is literally a riot, and the most notorious game in our history. The Brummies invade the pitch shortly after the start. The players come off and it is 20 minutes before order can be restored. A great effort by Palace and particularly Wrightie gives us a 4-1 victory. But with City getting a point, it is not enough.
So we are in the first-ever end-of-season play-offs (no Wembley finale that year). We beat first Swindon and then Blackburn over two legs, overturning a two-goal deficit against the latter with a 3-0 victory at Selhurst. Back in the First Division after an eight-year gap.
1978-1979
Spot the ball: Palace v Burnley, May 11, 1979, with 51,000 inside Selhurst Park
The Second Division is tightly fought. Palace have to win the final home game against Burnley not only to get promotion but to be divisional champions. It is 7.30pm on Friday May 11, 1979. Somehow, 51,800 fans have been allowed to enter a stadium which then had a capacity of 50,000. An attendance record which is unlikely to be broken.
We win 2-0. Our first senior trophy since we were Third Division champions in 1920-1921.
1976-1977
The boss: Terry Venables at the start of his stellar managerial career
We are in the Third Division, having had successive relegations in 1973 and 1974. “Big Mal” Allison has been and gone, and in his place and at the start of his managerial career is Terry Venables. Little did we know then, he would be the first of three Palace managers to have managed England.
We have to overtake Wrexham for the third promotion spot. They have five games to play and we have four. They are five points ahead of us, and a win only brings two points. We win our last four games, including home and away against Wrexham, who can’t win any of their closing fixtures.
We take third place, ahead of Rotherham on goal difference and one point ahead of Wrexham.
1968-1969
You have to know the backstory.
Head for heights: Palace’s promotion-winning boss Bert Head
Palace supporters had not grown up in a glow of footballing triumph. Their side had spent most of its life in the bottom tier of English football, sometimes having to go cap-in-hand in order to be re-elected to the Football League to participate the following season. In 1964, the team was promoted to the Second Division, a level not seen since 1924.
Adding a little colour and context, let’s remember that in those monochrome days the home side was playing in claret and blue and nicknamed “The Glaziers”. Supporters at the western end of the ground stood on a grass embankment. A supermarket was nowhere to be seen. A pint of bitter was just two-bob (10p in post-decimalisation money), and you could enjoy a night out for 10s and come home with some loose change.
On January 25, the team slipped to a 2-1 home defeat by Blackpool. We were eight points below the main promotion challengers when a win only earned two points. The prospect of a seat at the top table seemed remote.
Fast forward to April 19. Palace had embarked on a 14-match unbeaten run, which eventually extended to 18, the longest in our history. They had trounced most of their promotion rivals in the process. A local derby at home to Fulham, already relegation-doomed. Victory would ensure entry into England’s elite league. Hapless Fulham two-up at half-time. Palace about to snatch disaster from the jaws of triumph!
All-time hero: John Jackson in action in goal against Man Utd later in 1969. Note the classic claret and blue pin-stripe Palace kit
A half-time blasting from manager, Bert Head. Almost immediately after resumption we pull a goal back. Equaliser. Then the winner from our centre forward, Cliff Jackson.
Utter jubilation. Supporters on the pitch. Players congregated in the Directors’ Box. Outstanding and much-loved goalkeeper John Jackson was the first to start throwing down his kit and others followed. That was quite a high degree of disinhibition for footballers in 1969.
I was 16 years old. My walk back home to Galpins Road that April afternoon was a journey on air. Every surviving Palace fan who can recall anything will surely testify to the same emotion.
48,000 people returned to Selhurst Park four months later. Our opponents – the great Manchester United who had won the European Cup in 1968. The grass embankment had been replaced by concrete terracing.
The claret and blue outfit and Glaziers nickname were replaced in 1973.
The Whitehorse Lane stand and the well-known supermarket opened for business in 1983.
And Palace had become a team to command respect.
It’s fairly clear which is Jerry Fitzpatrick’s favourite season finish.
But what’s yours?
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I was at a lot of those older games! Saw every game home and away for a couple of seasons running in the 70s. Supporting Palace as they fell and came back is why I’ve been to 80-odd league grounds!
And yet here we go again, we finally get a team capable of great things and off the players go.
Farewell Olise, it was a brief pleasure.
For the 1977 promotion you understate the tension – Palace’s last game was away to Wrexham. the situation was: i) If Palace didn’t win, Wrexham were up. ii) If Palace won by one goal, Wrexham needed a draw at champions Mansfield in their final game. iii) If Palace won by 2 goals, Wrexham had to beat Mansfield. Palace were 2 goals up at half time. Wrexham got back to 2-2 (which meant they were up). In the last 2 minutes Rachid Harkouk and Jeff Bourne scored to make it 2-4. One of my top 3 Palace games. As it turned out, Wrexham lost to Mansfield 1-0.
Was at that one as well Jack! Delirium when Rash the Smash forged through (!) from around the half way line IIRC and slotted it past the keeper. Bourne’s was a close range effort I think, it was the other end to where Palace were. What a night!