Part of this faith is the belief that success is just around the corner, if only this or that happened – including a team that performs consistently well over an appreciable length of time.
Another characteristic is that supporting a club side is for life. A bit like a marriage except that you can’t get a divorce even from a spouse that gives you trouble and strife. You’re stuck with it.
Perhaps ‘stuck’ is the wrong word. In love with the club is perhaps better. Sentimental, yes, but that is where I am. I have been in love with the Palace for 45 years or so since the late 1960s – a time when you could walk around the terracing of the ground at half time in order to stand behind the goal Palace were kicking into.
A roller coaster ride of course since then. Up-down, up-down. Into administration and out. It’s been fun sometimes, but nerve racking much of the time. Never really breaking through to the very top, while the trophy cabinet lacks anything of real prestige.
Yet another characteristic of the football fan is fear – fear that even when things are going pretty well that it’s all going to go t**s up. With Palace it usually does. Being a pessimist is part and parcel of being a Palace fan. So many times we seem to be on the up before it all goes horribly wrong. There are various reasons why. One is keeping a good team together. And the present is side is one of the best. Of course we all want to see a few even better players wearing the red and blue shirt (or the ‘it’s just like watching Brazil’ away one). I’m sure that Ms Pardew has several in mind.
But what of the current team? Can it stay together? With the 2014-15 season still fresh in mind, I’m alarmed. I don’t want my smugness of Palace finishing in the top ten to obscure reality. I’ve been there before. The problem is this: the club gets to a certain level then the likes of Arsenal come in for the likes of Ian Wright. The money is too much temptation. I can give other examples, but it’s too painful to recall. You know how it goes. Then a downward spiral.
Rumours currently abound. The bigger teams are sniffing around Dann, Ward, Puncheon and of course Bolasie. But it doesn’t stop there. Gayle (our top scorer last season) appears to be on the verge of departure. Delaney and Hangeland possibly. The entire established midfield seems up for grabs including Jedinak, McCarthy and Ledley. Rumours also circulate about who might come in – some Swindon striker who is a local hero and foreign players I anticipate most Palace fans have never heard of. Just now I need to call upon another enduring characteristic of earnest soccer fans – unease. Maybe it’s just me.
