Be Careful What You Wish For (30 page)

In the other three games we were abject, losing to Middlesbrough 1–0 at home, failing to turn up at Goodison Park as Everton trounced us 4–0 and then a dire performance against Blackburn away on a cold April night, losing 1–0 when Mikele Leigertwood gave away an unnecessary free kick on the right of our eighteen-yard box, something he was to repeat very soon with devastating consequences.

After losing to Blackburn, I actually felt for the first time that we were going to get relegated. Before these games we were two points clear of the relegation zone and after them we were second to bottom, two points from safety. I saw the bright lights of the Premier League recede into the distance. Yes, I was not grateful to be there, and no, I was no respecter of protocol nor had I been brainwashed by some of the Premier League nonsense but I didn’t want to go back to the Football League.

If you own a football club and if you have any real ambition, the Premier League is the only place to be. If you have been there as a player, manager, supporter and owner you don’t want to be anywhere else.

After Blackburn, it dawned on me that this dream might be coming to an end.

I wasn’t about to display my feelings, but I felt flat. Surprisingly, Iain Dowie picked up on it and lifted my spirits as he was so determined and so resolute.

And lo and behold, after four nondescript performances, at home we beat Liverpool, who were soon to be crowned European champions.

It was an incredible result and reignited my belief that we were going to stay up. We were back out of the relegation zone. During my ownership we played Liverpool seven times, only losing twice – not bad for a ‘smaller’ club!

The season came down to the last three games and it was a straight fight between us, Norwich, Southampton and West Brom, who were bottom and had been completely written off.

We played Newcastle and gained a credible point in a relatively boring 0–0 draw at St James’ Park. I had to physically restrain Bob Dowie during the game because the pressure had clearly got to him. If he wasn’t biting his nails he was up and out of his seat like some jack-in-the-box. As for Newcastle, a team that destroyed us earlier in the season, they were abstract and that’s being kind.

Our final home game was against fellow strugglers Southampton, now managed by Harry Redknapp, who had defected from their fiercest of rivals Portsmouth. Portsmouth, ironically, were to play a pivotal role in our destiny.

The game was a feisty affair. We took the lead, they pegged us
back
. Two players were sent off, Sorrando for Palace and Peter Crouch for Southampton.

Then at long last we saw Nicola Ventola, our wonder kid. He had been injured all season and like something out of Roy of the Rovers he scored with his first touch to put us 2–1 ahead. The fortune I had paid this kid to never see sight of him till that moment was finally worth every penny.

Then, as was our way that season, disaster conspired to bring us down to earth with an almighty bump.

Amidst deafening whistles from the Palace supporters, desperate to see the game come to an end which would have sparked wild celebrations and was likely to have secured our place in the Premier League, we conceded a goal in the third minute of stoppage time.

Unfortunately it was the fault of young Ventola, who went from hero to zero, failing to control a ball thrown to him by our keeper, who should actually have booted it out of the ground himself. The ball came straight back into our box and Danny Higginbotham scored to hand Southampton a Premier League lifeline.

We now had one game left to save ourselves. West Brom were bottom and playing Portsmouth and it only dawned on me later why this game had such a major impact on our future in top-flight football. I had it on very reliable information that with Portsmouth safe, their legion of supporters demanded that they didn’t lift a leg against West Brom to ensure Southampton went down. Unbearable pressure was put on the Portsmouth players and, while this was a major conspiracy theory and can never be substantiated, it was no help to us.

Southampton were home to Manchester United; Norwich, who were a point clear of the relegation zone and favourites to stay up, were away to Fulham, who, judging by recent performances were already on the beach; and we had the small matter of a London
derby
away to Charlton. As the Sunday approached the tension was building as literally all teams could save themselves, which I suppose made for compelling viewing.

Iain Dowie spoke to Chris Coleman, the Fulham manager, who assured him they would do their job and it was up to us to do ours. As old teammates you would expect nothing less. Iain took the players to Champneys for a day to ease the pressure and I flew up to the north on the Saturday to attend the massive annual charity ball hosted by John Caudwell, the billionaire owner of Phones4u, where I was to spend nearly £100,000 on auction items for a children’s charity. The next day I was to give up a lot more money.

The Sunday morning arrived and with a slight hangover I jumped in my helicopter and flew to London for what was to be an eventful and controversial day. I landed in Battersea and with a friend drove my lucky Aston Martin over to Greenwich, only to get stuck in traffic. I arrived late again, annoying myself intensely as this was the most important game of my ownership to date.

Upon entering the Valley, the home of Charlton, I donned my lucky suit, the one I had worn to death last year, and walked into a boiling cauldron of an atmosphere. It was a full house and despite having nothing to play for both the Charlton fans and their team were massively up for the match, determined to send their fierce rivals down.

The game was played at a frenetic pace. Charlton went ahead and at half-time we were 1–0 down. Norwich were getting beaten 2–0 but still safe and both West Brom and Southampton were drawing. So it was pretty much as you were.

The last forty-five minutes of the 2004–05 season were both controversial and heart-breaking for some of us in Premier League history.

Fifteen minutes into the second half all had changed. Poor Norwich were now losing 3–0 and on the way to an incredible 6–0 defeat, despite being in the box seat at the start of the day. Southampton were losing 2–1 and on their way to relegation. West Brom had scored and incredibly were out of the bottom three.

And what of us?

The atmosphere in the stadium was electric; the intensity of the Charlton fans was incredible. I think both our players and management were surprised at how committed Charlton were to this game.

I remember Andrew Johnson telling me afterwards that at half-time he had spoken to Bryan Hughes, an old teammate of his, and asked why Charlton were playing like their lives depended on it. Apparently the directive from up high was this game had to be won!

Dowie brought on the fans’ hero Dougie Freedman and within a minute he had levelled and it was now game on. Incredibly Dougie did it again and won us a penalty, which Andrew Johnson, against a backdrop of abuse from the Charlton fans, dispatched. With twenty minutes to go we were safe.

It was irrelevant what happened elsewhere and for thirteen minutes we dared to dream. Had Dowie worked the oracle again? Had Dougie Freedman popped up as the hero once more?

In the eighty-third minute, absolute disaster struck. Mikele Leigertwood gave away the same free kick needlessly as we had against Blackburn. Our goalkeeper came out like Superman, or in this case Cooperman, missed the cross and a Charlton player headed the equaliser.

With West Brom winning, the other two losing, incredibly they were staying up. We had seven minutes to try and save ourselves and when Charlton scored every conceivable emotion went through my head. Try as we might we never found that third goal.

The final whistle blew amongst celebrations from the Charlton
fans
, rejoicing deliriously in our demise as if they had won the Champions League. We had been relegated. Despite beating Liverpool, Spurs and Aston Villa, despite drawing with Manchester and Arsenal, despite doing the double over Birmingham and being unbeaten in our last four games, we were heading straight back to the Football League.

As I went to leave, I walked up the stairs past the jeering Charlton fans and was stopped by their chairman, Richard Murray, with whom I had enjoyed a friendly relationship. ‘Enjoy the Championship, tosser!’ he chortled, a reference to the
Sunday Times
article earlier that season. That was the start of open hostilities between the two clubs that were to have far-reaching consequences.

I started to walk away, stopped and turned back. I couldn’t believe what he had said to me at a time of such desperate disappointment.

I confronted Murray, asking how he could say such a thing at such a time. Murray just grinned maniacally, and remarked that I had been rude by being late for the game and rude by not attending lunch.

‘What?’ I stammered incredulously.

His reason for being so insulting was I hadn’t attended lunch, which I never did and always had my secretary politely decline.

He went on to mention the
Sunday Times
article, which I thought we had laid to rest on the day it came out, and then incredibly he asked me if I wanted to have a fight. ‘Fight?’ I said incredulously, ‘I am a chairman of a football club, as are you. Besides, you are an old man.’

I left Murray smirking happy in his nonsense, reminding him: ‘What goes around comes around.’

I went down to the pitch to console the players. One thing Murray’s absurd outburst had done was dispel any feeling I might have about
feeling
sorry for myself and replace it with a galvanised spirit of ‘We must get back.’

I actually gave Dowie a hug as, despite the fact we had got relegated and done it to ourselves by conceding late goals in the two critical games against Southampton and Charlton, he and the players had given their all.

In a downcast and despondent dressing room I spoke to the players, saying that I was proud of their efforts. We had come up short, but what did not kill us would make us stronger. I asked them if they liked this feeling, which of course they didn’t, and suggested they remember it and take it on to the pitch against the first opposition next season.

And that was that: the lights went down. Or not quite. As I walked out of the stadium, still being jeered by Charlton fans and the disappointment now beginning to resonate, I bumped into Wayne Routledge’s mother, who cheerfully announced I wouldn’t be seeing Wayne next year as he was off. Charming!

One last thing to do. I phoned Jeremy Peace, the West Brom chairman, who was obviously in mid-celebration, and congratulated him. It was a hard phone call to make, but who said I was not magnanimous in defeat?

11

DOWN WITH A BUMP

THROUGH THE SUMMER
of 2005 I reflected long and hard about being relegated from the Premier League after just one season. We were the architects of our own demise. The Premier League campaign had flown by. It seemed as soon as we were playing our first game away to Norwich with optimism, exuberance and expectation that it was all over.

I was coming to the unwelcome realisation that I was unlikely to get what I really wanted – Palace to be a major force in top-flight football – and I couldn’t indefinitely fund an impossible dream.

Palace had been christened the team of the eighties, not merely through their performance on the pitch, but also because of the size of the crowds. I remember sitting with my dad as a twelve-year-old in 1979 watching them beat Ipswich 4–1 to go to the top of the First Division, which would now be the Premier League, in front of over 40,000 fans. The club had an average of nigh on 37,000 supporters then, but six years later, after Noades had bought them and sold all their assets, barely 6,000 people were watching them.

Over twenty years the lack of investment and the sale of all its
best
assets to fund the football club and, in my view, its owner, saw the club spurn massive opportunities and eventually work its way backwards from being a team talked about as a potential ‘Man United of the South’ to being a club that just had potential.

Like a lot of ‘potential’ big clubs Palace had a core fan base. In our case, this was around 10,000 season ticket holders. When you looked at clubs like Norwich, Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds, who were not performing as well as us, they had double the amount of season ticket holders. This realisation put things into perspective. Despite the size of our catchment area we would never really have the kind of club that was the bedrock of the community. Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United shirts were worn in Croydon’s high street. Damn sure Palace shirts were not worn in Liverpool or Manchester!

One of the ways, besides continual success, which marked a team as a Premier League club, was to build a brand-new stadium, but regardless of what I was prepared to do it was always going to be difficult given we were based in London, where land is at a premium and councils not overly interested in helping. Redevelopment was unfeasible given that Noades would not sell the stadium for a realistic price. The numerous obstacles surrounding Selhurst Park meant it was highly unlikely I could turn it from a 26,000 capacity all-seater stadium to a 35–40,000 capacity purpose-built stadium that could also house all the requisite facilities for ‘secondary spend’ opportunities. Thus the income streams were never really going to improve to the point where we could compete at the top end of football.

Despite all of this and a nagging feeling that I might have had my day in the sun, I decided I couldn’t leave the club or sell it as it was.

When we got promoted I had felt I owed it to myself to stay
and
now we were relegated I felt I had a moral obligation and a determination to right the injustices of the relegation by standing up and being committed, which is probably what I should have been literally!

At this time it probably became a bit more of a labour rather than a labour of love but I didn’t want to leave tarnished by relegation on my watch. Also, this was Palace’s centenary year, which was a big deal for the club and its fans, and I had the hope of getting back to the Premier League as a landmark for our hundredth year in existence.