So then, at precisely 15:21 yesterday afternoon, Crystal Palace announced to whoever was listening, that Glenn Murray had agreed to join the club on a three year deal having failed to come to an arrangement with his previous employers, Brighton and Hove Albion.
It is a transfer which has been on the cards for some time. Long before the season finished, reports surfaced that Freedman was interested in the frontman, only for Dougie to quash any claims of feasibility before they had time to get off the ground. With that, the majority of the Palace faithful decided to forget about the move all together, taking our managers word as gospel and settling our thoughts on the all-important run in to the Championship season.
It wasn’t until our second tier status had been confirmed that the rumours resurfaced, with numerous “well informed” sources intimating that they were privy to information which suggested that Murray had been to the training ground for a medical and that a deal was close.
With that, the Palace rumour mill went into an insane form of overdrive, as it tends to do whenever there is a sniff of a new signing these days, leaving the less informed among us to scramble for any shred of creditable fact we could find.
There were pages upon pages of unsubstantiated rubbish being discussed on the message boards, sightings of our potential new star at bus stops, petrol stations and motorway service car parks, but as is often the way with these things, no official word as to whether it was anywhere near close to becoming a done deal.
That was until yesterday when the short statement found here allowed us all to breathe a little easier, safe in the knowledge that not only had we secured the services of what appeared in every sense to be a natural goal scorer, but that we had also managed to do so whilst infuriating our rivals from the south coast.
Up until that point, the vast majority of the points made by Brighton fans seemed to focus on the view that they trusted their beloved manager Gus Poyet implicitly with all things Seagull and that, if he had deemed Glenn Murray unable to cope with the rigours of Championship football, they would manage. It was a perspective I wasn’t entirely convinced by, but I let it go, putting it down to the grieving process after the loss of a loved one being a long and often unpredictable path.
It was only when the transfer became official that the tone of the messages and tweets changed dramatically for the worse, with Brighton fans making it known in whichever way possible that everyone associated with Crystal Palace Football Club, from Glenn Murray and the supporters, to the woman who used to clean the toilets in 1972 was a disgusting, pointless waste of space. Once again I bit my tongue to a degree, as I could sympathise with the pain of letting go of a prized asset for peanuts, I don’t need to remind anyone reading this of the John Bostock saga again, I’m sure.
The moment that eventually tipped me over the edge of reasonable understanding, and into the wilderness of pure hilarity was when the fifth stage of the grieving process appeared to kick in for most of them, leading them to claim, on mass that we were somehow a smaller and less illustrious club than their fine selves, that we had no money, no fans and were well back on the road to rack and ruin financially all in one big hit.
Wild rumours that Murray was now our top earner came to the fore, frenzied predictions of back to back promotions were being hurled at us from every angle, and perhaps most perplexing of all, the defiant claims that Will Hoskins was somehow a suitable replacement for their previously beloved Murray appeared to be doing the rounds everywhere you looked.
It appeared as though every one of their newly acquired season ticket holders had decided to finally make themselves known in public and declare, with misguided sincerity, that they had somehow gone through a life altering change in the previous few hours and that they were now established as a far bigger club than ourselves.
Such well known faces as Robyn Schonhofer, (yes I had to Google her as well) threw their weight behind the campaign declaring, “But Palace fans are deluded if they think it’s for a better club. Man Utd yes but Palace? – ha ha excuse me while I laugh hysterically!” on her Twitter account, leading to heated debates with many a Palace fan, myself included over who in fact was the bigger club in the grand scheme of things, all rather silly when you think about it.
Having had a further few hours to mull the whole situation over, the issue really does boil down to two key factors, one being the construction of a sparkly new stadium for the Seagulls, which appears to have given them the unwavering belief that they will now go on to dominate Europe and possibly the global game in the next few years, thus finally overtaking us. Whilst the other simply relates to the fact that one of their heroes from the past season has decided to jump ship for a better contract just when everything was looking rosy for them, forcing their supporters to question the true nature of the supposed good times that are expected to roll for the club in the decades to come.
It is somewhat of a predictable reaction for a club who have spent the majority of their recent history in the division directly below our own, for them to chuck their toys everywhere in a childish manner as soon as the first sign of trouble appears on the horizon, unable to understand why anyone would want to leave them. Sadly though, the reality of modern football dictates that a clubs top players will attract interest from elsewhere. As supporters, we have had to deal with our fair share of loved players lost because of financial incentive in recent years.
This has been a transfer that has proved rather eventful, and it certainly does nothing but add extra spice to our two league fixtures with our seaside neighbours next season. For the time being however, I would like to say that I welcome Mr Murray to Selhurst Park with open arms, and wish him every success in his Palace career. It can’t have been an easy decision for him to make but I for one am extremely glad he has made it. Ultimately, if you do require any further persuasion as to the merits of “our” Glenn, I encourage you to take a look at the video below.
Until next time.
