{"id":11154,"date":"2025-04-22T09:10:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T08:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11154"},"modified":"2025-04-23T23:45:36","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T22:45:36","slug":"the-oldest-club-in-the-world-come-to-the-home-of-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11154","title":{"rendered":"The Oldest Club in the World Come to the Home of Football"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Those who follow such things might notice that I rarely do previews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My strong preference is to analyse and report matches but we were short of a  previewer and I stepped in to cover Wednesday\u2019s match between Arsenal and Crystal Palace. When I grew up in South London, Palace was the nearest professional club to my home and just before I married I could walk to the ground (and frequently did) in about twenty minutes. Many of my friends are Palace fans and a pretty thankless task it has been following them over the years. They do not have a glorious history! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they do have a (disputed) claim to fame. Some of their fans believe they are the oldest professional football club in the world. Crystal Palace, just to confuse you, was first erected in Hyde Park in 1851 for the first international trade fair to be held in Britain. The design and concept of the original edifice was rejected and a crafty entrepreneur bought the concept and moved the project close to Sydenham Hill in South East London. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A group of workers formed a football team in 1861 but it was soon disbanded and the club that we recognise today was finally formed in 1905 which makes it exactly as old as Chelsea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Palace had very little success in the first fifty or so years of their existence but their ground at Selhurst Park was conveniently situated for the railway and like any London ground, car parking is at a premium. I\u2019ve probably watched fifty or sixty games there since I started going. They were in the old Fourth Division when I first went there in 1960. The star player was a fine striker called Johnny Byrne who moved on to gain honours and England caps with West Ham. He was replaced by Cliff Holton, an ex- Arsenal striker, and he led them into the Second Division. They had a high turnover of managers but under Dick Graham they made progress and, led by a very unlikely character in Bert Head, they made their fans dreams come true by getting promotion to the old First Division in 1969-70. They managed to stay up for several seasons and though there was an element of boom and bust the club really started to look up in the 1980s when Terry Venables  became coach and they briefly threatened to win honours . They have now been in the Premier League continuously for more than ten years and their performances have been extremely consistent or to put it another way, rather boring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Palace have never won a major trophy, never been in Europe and our main link with them is Ian Wright whom we signed from them in 1991. I am fond of the club and desperately hope they win the Cup this season but their supporters are huge pessimists, having seen them fail so often at the last hurdle!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their form this season has swung from alarming – they started the season very poorly – to impressive. They recently recorded a slew of fine away victories and in the FA Cup quarter final at Fulham they were extremely impressive. But since then they have lost 5-2 at C130y and were heavily beaten last week by Newcastle .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their manager Oliver Glasner came from Eintracht Frankfurt where he won the Europa League. He is often an advocate of three at the back with Guehi marshalling the defence containing the impressive Frenchman, Lacroix. Munoz, the prolific Colombian and Mitchell make two very good wing-backs. The midfield is strong with Adam Wharton and Lerma providing holding quality but their star is Eberechi Eze who is a player many of us would like to see in red and white. Mateta is a fine striker and his deputy is one of our own Eddie Nketiah. Sarr, the other striker is quick and dangerous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing about Wednesday\u2019s match is that both clubs have other much bigger priorities. Aside from our Champions League  tie with PSG six days after the Palace match, Palace, safe from relegation, are very preoccupied by a potentially winnable Cup semi-final with Villa at Wembley. This is a game that both teams want to exit from with no injuries. Three points would almost certainly qualify us for the Champions League next season but expect significant rotation on both sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suspect this may be a decent guess at the Arsenal side <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timber White Kiwior Tierney <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partey Zinchenko <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martinelli Nwaneri Trossard<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merino <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe Palace at their best would create formidable problems but they have other fish to fry. We beat them 5-1 at Selhurst a few days after we knocked them out of the Carabao Cup. I\u2019m predicting a 2-1 victory.  Let\u2019s do the treble over them and hope that both sides can prepare happily for the bigger challenges just around the corner. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those who follow such things might notice that I rarely do previews. My strong preference is to analyse and report matches but we were short of a  previewer and I stepped in to cover Wednesday\u2019s match between Arsenal and Crystal Palace. When I grew up in South London, Palace was the nearest professional club to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11154"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11157,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11154\/revisions\/11157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}