Be Careful What You Wish For (40 page)

Fifteen apprehension-filled minutes later she phoned me back and I spoke to the ambulance medic, who told me that her heart rate was now at a staggering 230 beats per minute and they were immediately taking her to hospital to stop her heart, inject her with adrenalin and restart it!

Can you imagine being told that this is happening and your partner and unborn child are at risk? I was in a state of complete panic. After I had hung on by the phone for nearly an hour in abject terror, Suzanne’s chirpy little voice came on the phone: ‘Everything is all right; I’m fine.’ That certainly put life into perspective; it also put Suzanne in the Portland Hospital – with no expense spared – for eight weeks after she had a recurrence not long afterwards! It seemed that the reason for the attacks was that Suzanne had been taking the wrong dosage of her medication for ME.

After the scare in November and Suzanne being ‘locked up’ in a luxurious room at the Portland Hospital, on 18 January 2008 at 9.02 a.m., and weighing seven pounds and two ounces, my beautiful little girl Cameron was born. And in a distinctly un-Jordan-like way she didn’t utter a murmur for days. Cameron arrived in the world via a Caesarean and the previous evening Suzanne and I had discussed the birthing music. I had wanted ‘The First Cut is the Deepest’ and Suz suggested ‘Strangers in the Night’. We ended up settling for ‘Glad All Over’, the Palace theme tune. Of course we didn’t, even I couldn’t get away with that. I am pleased
to
say I have an adorable but wilful little girl who is the light of my life, especially in recent times.

Just a week after my beautiful little girl was born, my father had to have a second huge operation on his heart. He had had a quadruple bypass in 2005, which astounded us all at the time as he was such a fit man. He came through that operation with flying colours but this time round the operation was fraught with complications. The first operation had lasted almost five hours, but this was getting on for ten and as time dragged by Dominic and I became more concerned.

We had been waiting for news but after hearing nothing we went to the hospital, and were told there were serious complications. There was internal bleeding and they couldn’t sew up his chest and had to leave him in the theatre overnight, on a table with his chest packed with ice and gauze. The next day they managed to stop the bleeding and sew him up, but he was now on a ventilator and in a very serious condition and was not getting better. This was the first time I saw my father in such a vulnerable state and there was a very real possibility he might not survive: his blood pressure was almost non-existent, his oxygen content was incredibly low and his lungs were collapsing. Over the next three days this situation got worse rather than better.

Dominic and I sat by his bed day in day out; my father was kept breathing by the ventilator and so heavily medicated that he was only partially aware of us. I spoke to him about Palace, about anything to try and engage him. It was heart-wrenching for us, but nothing compared to what he was going through.

After about five days of doctors shrugging when we asked what they were going to do next for my dad, I exploded in the intensive care unit to such an extent they threatened to throw me out. I wanted something done and I didn’t care how they did it. The
specialist
said there was an American who was an expert in these circumstances they could get in. ‘Get him in, then!’ I exclaimed. It took a day or so for him to arrive and after what appeared to be the turning of a few valves and the pushing of some buttons, within hours my dad was sitting up, coherent, still on the ventilator but talking and on the road to recovery. But what if I hadn’t had that emotional outburst?

Back to the comparatively trivial business of football.

We reached the end of January still unbeaten but then surrendered inexplicably away to Leicester and then lost two more games on the bounce, one of them away to Charlton. It was the first time I had been to the Valley since May 2005 and relegation from the Premier League. The game was moved to a Friday night due to police intelligence of potential crowd trouble and I was instructed that I was going to have a police escort into the ground, which I duly ignored, and stewards sitting next to me, such was the bad feeling between the clubs, and more so from the Charlton fans towards me.

I went with my entourage of six friends who now accompanied me to most matches. They were always frustrated by my desire to be at the game only five minutes before kick-off so as not to fraternise with the opposition, whilst they wanted to sit in boardrooms quaffing wine and eating laid-on meals. The atmosphere as I walked in was intense and very quickly I was surrounded by stewards and police. I got to enjoy the spectacle of the Charlton fans singing the words of the song I now knew well: ‘Simon Jordan is a wanker, is a wanker.’ Worse than that I watched us get beat 2–0 with some rascal little kid sat in front of me in his Charlton scarf, turning around taking pictures of me on his camera phone, which amused me no end!

It did however become serious when the police instructed me to stay in the ground for an hour after the match. No way was I sitting around in that stadium and I told them so. I was escorted, along with my friends, by stewards and police who scrummed together and virtually lifted me off my feet and through the crowd as bottles and abuse rained down. Even I had to consider that was a little scary and perhaps I should have taken their advice.

In December 2007 I had travelled to Barnsley to watch us play. We had received a request from the wife of an ardent Palace fan who lived in the area. Her husband Carl had terminal cancer and wanted to see his beloved club and to meet me. I met Carl Lewis before the game and had a long chat, and this man’s indomitable spirit moved me so much that on leaving him I instructed Phil Alexander that whenever Carl was free, I wanted a private jet sent for him and his family to fly them to London, and for them to be put up in a hotel, to meet the players, sit in the dressing room before the game and be my guest at a game of his choice.

But early in the New Year, my PA received an email from his wife Jane. I still have it today, it reads:

Could you please forward this to Simon from me. Simon will never know what it meant for Carl to meet him at Barnsley. Carl was so looking forward to being a guest in the boardroom and meeting Simon again, but unfortunately that will not now be possible. Carl was discharged from hospital three weeks ago because he was given a prognosis of two to three days at most. I didn’t want him to die in hospital so brought him home.

Carl is now very poorly and I don’t expect him to last more than a few days. I would like Simon to know that the first Palace match I went to with Carl, I looked across at this man
with
longish blond hair, a fur coat and a mobile phone in his hand. I asked Carl who he was to which Carl replied, ‘That’s God!’ Quite indignant that I didn’t know. So Simon, I can’t thank you enough for allowing Carl to meet his God and only wish he could have had his lunch with you that he was so looking forward to.

This email made me cry, as it does even now as I am writing this, and I have never forgotten Carl. For someone to suffer this way and to think of me in the manner he did was humbling and it showed how important football was to people and how privileged I was to be held in such regard.

I emailed the letter to Neil Warnock with the accompanying message. ‘Neil read the below. This is the reason why I stay in football and am determined to succeed because of people like this. Heart-breaking!’ I wanted Neil and the players to know about this man and how much he loved his football club and what they did.

It looked as if the wheels had come off this phenomenal turn-around under Neil as we set off to play Bristol City on a freezing cold Monday night in February with a team decimated by injuries. There was a little niggle between the two clubs as when we had played them a month earlier in January and beaten them 2–0, they had bitterly complained that we were over-physical. This game was not without controversy and was delayed for fifteen minutes due to floodlight failure. As the game was live on Sky the referee came on television and explained the delay and it has to be said he looked very strange, his eyes were as wide as saucers.

The game eventually got under way. We were flat in the first half but came flying out the blocks in the second and scored through our seventeen-year-old left back Lee Hills, making his first start for the club. We were still in the lead at ninety minutes. But then, after
a
disgraceful decision – and not the first we got at Bristol City – the referee awarded four minutes of injury time and with no events in the those four minutes to prolong that period, proceeded to play another minute in which Bristol City got a corner and scored.

Cue outrage from the manager and the chairman. In the boardroom after the match, the Bristol City chairman, rather than be magnanimous about this highway robbery was doing a celebratory dance. As I glanced over with the red mist descending, he reminded me of some demented Morris dancer. This resulted in a coffee cup being flung at the TV by me. Perhaps I should refrain from going into boardrooms, I thought. Neil went on TV and had a rant about the referee, being funny in an outraged way, saying at one point he thought it was a bit strong that the referee punched the air in celebration when Bristol scored!

Neil was charged by the FA for criticising the referee and I suggested he put down his mitigating circumstances in writing and I would read the letter before it went off. I can write and say some outrageous stuff but Neil accused the referee of everything from being ‘The third gunman on the grassy knoll’ to an outlandish suggestion as to what may have caused his strange appearance on TV before the game. Even I couldn’t let him write that and toned it down, to no avail as he still got fined and I got to pick up the tab.

We lost again on the Saturday at home to Wolves, a team we had annihilated 3–0 away a month earlier and dropped to eleventh, and it looked as if we had fallen away. But not this team or, more to the point, this manager. We put in another Herculean effort to win six and draw four of the next eleven games and went into the last match of the campaign needing to beat Burnley at home to secure a play-off place.

In the just under ten years of my ownership this was my favourite day. Naturally there had been significant highs that preceded it.
The
play-off final win in 2004, the League Cup semi-final victory over Liverpool and a variety of other big days. But this was the day I will always remember. It was what I always wanted from my ownership of the club, a day when owner, manager, players and supporters were in complete harmony.

We thrashed Burnley 5–0 to take our place in the play-offs with our young star Victor Moses opening the scoring. The stadium was a scene of unbridled joy as Neil took the players for the customary lap of honour in the last home game of the season. He took the microphone on the pitch and applauded the players and the fans for their tremendous efforts and then out of the blue announced that the person who should be thanked the most was the chairman.

It was the most embarrassing and gratifying moment I had in football. Not because I needed the plaudits but because the manager, a person in other guises I had nothing but strife with over the years, had publicly stated such support and gratitude. It meant an awful amount to my family and defied all the people who had said that the relationship between Neil and me was doomed from the outset.

Whether or not we won or lost in the play-offs this achievement was by far and away the best. Unlike in 2003–04 when Dowie inherited a very talented but grossly underperforming team, this squad was made up of a mixture of tremendously talented young players from our academy, some senior players who had not covered themselves in glory prior to Warnock’s arrival and a raft of inspired loan signings. And they all shared an incredible bond and a will to win, which had been instilled in them by Neil Warnock and his management team.

Now we were facing Bristol City in the play-off semi-final, with the added pressure of being favourites to secure promotion back to the promised land and all that meant. Not least of all the release of the tremendous financial pressure on me.

15

STOP THE TRAIN, I THINK I WANT TO GET OFF!

AFTER THE EUPHORIA
of getting into the play-offs it never really entered my head that we wouldn’t get past our opponents Bristol City in the semi-finals. This was not arrogance, it was just that I had never seen all the parts of the football club working together so well, as beforehand there was always some sort of dissension within the ranks. I often said that I could buy the best player in the world, build a brand-new stadium and sell tickets at half price and someone, somewhere, would complain the hot dogs tasted like shit. But not this time: fans, owner, manager and players were in complete harmony.

We lost the play-offs against Bristol City, not in the pathetic manner we had whimpered out in 2006 but with a fully committed performance in both games. In truth, in the first leg at Selhurst Park, we met inspired opponents and were slightly under par and got beaten 2–1. After going a goal down we equalised through a penalty from Ben Watson but they scored a world-class goal with virtually the last kick of the game.

The second leg was on the Tuesday, and although history dictated that no team that lost the first leg had ever progressed, I felt anything was possible with Neil. He was slightly irritated as the
Bristol
City players and fans had, in his view, over-celebrated on the Saturday, but this just seemed to increase his determination.

Driving to the away leg I listened to talkSPORT, who were carrying an interview with the Bristol City chairman. He was talking about the game and their hopes for success. He also mentioned me, saying I was a strange person, not overly friendly, and would only speak if I were spoken to. It was a rather unnecessary comment, I thought, as well as stupid, because he had not actually spoken to me so by definition he was guilty of the very thing he was accusing me of! I sincerely hoped I had the opportunity to speak to him after the game and give him my commiserations.