Many people, pundits and fans alike, predicted that we would be relegated in our very first season after promotion from the Championship. To be honest our recent history never really at any point suggested we would even have a chance at making it into the top flight of English football.
A quick look back will show us that the 2012-13 season was our 8th consecutive season in the Championship, the previous three had seen us finish 21st, 20th and 17th, an improvement of just 4 league places in 3 years.
We finished 21st in the 2009/10 season when we were docked 10 points for going into administration and we survived relegation on the very last day of the season. Now, just 4 years later, we have been promoted to the Premier League and finished 11th. How can a team who just barely managed to stay in the Championship on the last day of the season go on to finish mid table in what some argue is the hardest league in the world. And all that in 4 short years.
Did we have a massive injection of cash? No.
Did we bring through a raft of highly talented youth players? No.
Was it achieved through a high mix of luck and things ‘falling’ right for us? Maybe.
Or did it take an absolutely huge amount of work, dedication and passion? Most probably.
So do we belong in the Premier League, or maybe more accurately have we earned the right to be in the Premier League. Within the first 10 games of our first season back we amassed just 3 lonely points and by game 21 we were rock bottom of the league. During that time we’d been thumped 4-1 by Fulham, conceded 31 and scored just 10 league goals. Doesn’t seem like we deserve to be in the best league in the world so far does it?
Tony Pulis had this to say of our campaign last season;
“..one stat not to forget is that we managed to finish 11th with the smallest budget in this league.
This Football club has massively overachieved and everyone should take great credit, it has been a great ride.”
‘Smallest budget in the league’ and ‘massively overachieved’ really do speak volumes. Realistically, having the least amount of money to spend and having gained promotion against all odds, we should have been relegated straight away. But football is such a glorious sport that underdogs can beat the favourites and can achieve success in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Palace faced teams worth 100m+ week in and week out last season. Our team was over flowing with odds and ends type of players signed from all over the place. Disastrous signings like Florian Marange and high risk signatures like Marouane Chamakh threatened to suck the life and passion out of our players and fans alike before the season had really even gotten under way. Our record signing Dwight Gayle proved ultimately a good player but only after he’d spent most of the season frustrated by lack of first team action and a lack of goals. Our defence looked incredibly leaky and our top goal scorer from the previous season was severely injured. To be quite honest with you I’m still surprised that we managed to survive with all that going against us.
But just because we had an uphill struggle, just because we were written off by just about every pundit across the land before the season had started and just because every single fact and reasoning had us dropping back down again quicker than Arjen Robben trying to win a penalty, does not mean we don’t deserve to be in the Premier League. After a terrible start under Holloway we improved game on game. We fought, we battled, we organised ourselves, played with passion, aggression and a die for your team attitude that sparked the whole club into life. Fans sang even louder (if that was possible) commentators started to give us a tiny chance to produce a miracle, everyone started to believe that Crystal Palace could perhaps achieve its greatest accomplishment in its history.
We may not be the richest team, we may not have a history littered with trophies and European adventures, we may have a small stadium and we may have one of the weakest squads in the league, but Crystal Palace have passion, spirit and the solid foundations of a team with the potential to be huge and above all we now have the belief that this and anything else is possible. Whether we deserve to be in the Premier League is irrelevant. The fact is we are here and if all goes to plan we are here to stay.