Saturday started off with the truly best intentions at its heart. A fan led initiative which aimed to get as many Palace supporters up to the Ricoh Arena for our fixture against Coventry City had proved to be a great success, with the box office selling 1,850 tickets prior to the game with the expectation of another 3 - 400 being shifted on the day.
The noise and colour inside the stadium beautifully highlighted just how good a turnout the promotion had generated, with upwards of 2,000 fans decked out in Red and Blue, some sporting Fedora hats and cigars in memory of the sadly departed club legend, Malcolm Alison, others happy to just bring their support and a few appropriately coloured balloons to ease the atmosphere along.
The game itself generated more frustration than anything, with Palace missing a few good chances to go ahead in the 1st half before falling behind when Paddy McCarthy accidently nodded the ball past a despairing Julian Speroni to give the home side the advantage going into the break, not that one goal dampened the spirits of the travelling fans, with the noise level remaining at a constant crackle throughout the last few minutes of the half.
Not surprisingly, the 2nd half involved much of the same, our fans easily drowning out the noise from the Coventry fans, who seemed to have adopted a somewhat scatter gun effect to their seating arrangements in the home end, leaving little to no chance for atmosphere of any kind to build, even when their team was in front.
On the pitch, it unfortunately appeared that we were sliding further and further away from the possibility of getting anything out of the game, a view that was only given more weight when, Marlon King ghosted in at the back post to put the home team two goals to the good.
Admittedly, we did manage to get a consolation goal when Steffen Iversen prodded home a Dean Moxey cross late on, but, inevitably, it all came a bit too late to make much of a difference.
The only other thing I would add to my comments on the game is that, after numerous dreary Saturday afternoons attempting to dissect where we are going wrong away from home, I feel I am now able to categorically state that the problems resonate in the centre of midfield.
With Marrow and Danns both missing on Saturday, Dougie was faced with no other option than to play the lightweight Irish sprayer of wayward passes Owen Garvan alongside David Wright in the middle of the park. Sadly, this proved not to be the most successful of partnerships and resulted in us looking badly short of any bite and determination when a lot of 50-50 challenges presented themselves.
I do believe that, despite the stick David Wright does occasionally get from some Palace fans, he is capable of looking relatively accomplished as a defensive midfielder, but only when he has got the likes of Marrow next to him. This issue only seems to become more pronounced when we are playing away from home and teams such as Coventry attempt to play a far more attacking game than if they were making the trip to Selhurst.
Without wanting to drone on too much about our midfield frailties, I would like to end by saying that, although I may well have spoken a lot about how great our fans are in my first three posts, Saturday proved to anyone watching that we really are a special bunch. Only 6 points on the road all year, 4th bottom and facing a side with absolutely abysmal current form and yet, we still manage to get fans desperate to turn up in massive numbers to show just how passionate they are about our great football club.
As Jermaine Easter so aptly put in on Twitter last night, "These Eagle fans are something else."
Bring on Sheffield United!
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