I was at a mate’s for a Liverpool game a few seasons back, one of those matches where Palace were away and everyone assumed it’d be routine. It wasn’t. Can’t even remember the exact scoreline now, only that his face went through about four stages of grief in ninety minutes.
That’s Palace and Liverpool for you though. Ask any Reds fan who’s been paying attention the last decade and there’s a specific kind of dread that creeps in whenever this fixture comes round, no matter what the form book says or what the odds look like to anyone betting online before kickoff.
The Liverpool hoodoo, decade in and decade out
Go back to 2014 first. Liverpool turned up at Selhurst 3-0 up and cruising toward what would’ve been their first title since 1990. Palace claw it back to 3-3. That result alone effectively handed the title to Manchester City that year, and Liverpool fans still wince at the mention of it. Fast forward and it’s kept happening in different shapes. Goal.com were openly calling Palace a “bogey side” for Liverpool back in 2018, noting that Klopp’s side had actually lost four of the previous seven meetings between the clubs at that point.
Then last September, Ismaila Sarr did it again, a dramatic late goal against the reigning champions, and somebody worked out afterward that it was his fifth goal in just eight career games against Liverpool specifically. Five in eight. Against one team. That’s not a coincidence at that point, that’s a pattern, whatever anyone wants to call it.
This season it happened again too, different script though, Eddie Nketiah popping up in the 97th minute to end Liverpool’s perfect unbeaten start to the campaign, Palace the only team left who hadn’t lost yet. Different managers at Anfield each time this has happened, different Palace squads half the time as well, and somehow the result rhymes anyway.
It’s not just Liverpool either
The Man City result last May still gets brought up constantly, and fair enough, it should. Palace beat City 1-0 in the FA Cup final, their first major trophy in the club’s entire history. Doesn’t matter that it happened at Wembley rather than Selhurst itself, the psychology’s the same. A big, decorated club, expected to win comfortably, walks away having lost to Crystal Palace. That’s basically the whole reputation summed up in ninety minutes.
Why this keeps happening isn’t really a mystery
None of this is magic, to be clear. Selhurst’s tight, the crowd’s right on top of the pitch, and Palace under managers like Glasner have leaned into being genuinely awkward to play against rather than trying to out-possess bigger clubs. Doesn’t always work. Some seasons Palace’s home form is patchy, this current one included if you look purely at the table. But that’s kind of the point. The reputation doesn’t come from being consistently brilliant at home, it comes from producing exactly the wrong result at exactly the moment a bigger club can least afford it. Nobody remembers the routine 1-0 losses. Everyone remembers the title race getting blown up.
The bit every visiting fan quietly knows
Talk to fans of any of the traditional “big” clubs before a trip to Selhurst and you’ll get a version of the same answer, cautious optimism dressed up as confidence. They know the form book says one thing. They also know history says something else entirely, and that history has a nasty habit of repeating itself at the worst possible time.
Big reputations really do have a habit of quietly unraveling once they cross into SE25. Ask Liverpool. Ask Man City. At this point, they’ve both got the receipts.
