Big Malc & Big Changes
We rejoin our intrepid heroes under new management, and what a manager he was. Malcolm ‘Big Malc’ Allison was, shall we say, a character. Well known for his fedora and cigar (seriously, look at this dapper motherfucker), Big Malc was a huge influence not only on Palace, but English football as a whole. In the 1973-74 season, Allison was fresh off a tenure at Manchester City where he wrote himself into the club’s folklore as the assistant to the much more reserved Joe Mercer, the pair forming a famous partnership and presiding over one of the most successful periods the Manchester club had ever seen.
After arriving at Palace, Allison immediately began work on huge changes to the club’s very foundation, building a new identity from a pick ‘n’ mix of Europe’s iconic teams. Within months, the classic Villa-inspired claret and blue kits were gone, replaced by a red and blue colour scheme inspired by Barcelona. Gone too were the old badges, which usually were a stylised ‘Crystal Palace’ script, replaced by a Benfica-inspired eagle as a combination of a badge and a catch-all club mascot. Likewise, ‘The Glaziers’ became ‘The Eagles’, and the club as we now know it was born.
Unfortunately, Big Malc’s levels of swag were sadly inversely proportional to his team’s on-field success. Palace endured a miserable season despite the late boost of new signing Peter Taylor, and succumbed to the drop for a second season running. Returning to Division Three for the first time in 11 years in the 1974-75 season, Malcolm Allison once again made pivotal moves that would secure his legacy long after he was gone. Terry Venables and Ian Evans both arrived at the club from QPR in exchange for winger Don Rogers, a move that would prove to be beneficial to the country as much as the club. Meanwhile, Allison deployed his famous charisma to convince the board to invest heavily at youth level, a decision that would lead to the eventual development of the notable Crystal Palace academy. The season passed without note in the league, but Palace made one of their deepest ever FA cup runs, reaching the semi-final before falling to Southampton.
Unfortunately for Big Malc, he lived and died by his character. The poor results on the pitch were one thing, but hisoff field antics were quite another. Having womanised the pants off any female within a five mile radius of him - including Christine Keeler of Profumo scandal fame and two Miss UKs - the final straw came when he introduced a fine young lady (...porn star) by the name of Fiona Richmond to share the club bath with him. Terry Venables was clearly a prescient man:
“I was in the bath with all the players and we heard the whisper that she was coming down the corridor." So far, so good. "We all leapt out and hid, because we knew there'd be photos and that wouldn't go down too well. Malcolm and Fiona dropped everything and got in the bath.”
As it happened, the picture did indeed spread like wildfire across the newspapers. The board decided that enough was enough, and Malcolm Allison left three years after he had arrived, in a tenure that had changed the club forever.
Terry Venables & A New Rivalry
Terry Venables had spent the vast majority of his two year Palace on-pitch career acquainting himself with the highly varnished wood of the bench or the well scrubbed medical table. With his career winding down - he was 31 when he arrived in south London - Venables tried his hand at coaching under Allison’s guidance. With Palace missing out on promotion and firing Allison, the young coach was offered the opportunity to take over from the man who brought him to the club.
Venables, of course, turned out to be a highly talented manager. In his very first season he succeeded where Allison failed, guiding Palace to promotion back to the Second Division in remarkable fashion. Clad in a version of the kit that would go on to become one of the club’s trademark styles, Palace went in to their final game of the season away at Wrexham needing to win by two goals. With the score locked at 2-2 in the 89th minute, Algerian forward Rachid ‘Rash the Smash’ Harkouk - the man with the mop that would inspire so many wonderful ‘fros down the years - scored in the 90th minute and his (rather less iconically-groomed) strike partner Jeff Bourne rammed one home in injury time to give Palace a 2-4 win and one of the most memorable games in the club’s history.
It was around this time that one of the strangest rivalries in British football was sparked. Crystal Palace and Brighton & Hove Albion were well acquainted with each other, having played each other numerous times over the years, but it was Palace’s appointment of Venables and Brighton’s subsequent hire of the Palace manager’s ex-teammate and rival Alan Mullery that really sparked what was to become the M23 derby. The clubs first met that season at Brighton’s ground, The Goldstone in Hove. The league match finished 1-1, with some low-level disruption caused by three smoke bombs being thrown onto the pitch. The two sides were then drawn together in the first round of the FA Cup at the same venue, with the match ending as a 2-2 draw, and the replay at Selhurst Park three days later again providing a 1-1 result. Throughout the course of the games, the two well-matched sides had got more frustrated and as a result dirtier and more competitive as the games went by.
Things came to a head in the second replay, where poor weather had forced a postponement of the final game in a series marked by violent flare-ups. The two managers had spent much of the previous few days slinging mud, at first subtly, later openly, and the atsmosphere at a raucous Stamford Bridge was fractious to say the least. Palace struck the first blow through Paul Holder, before Brighton’s Peter Ward had a goal disallowed. Brighton were then awarded a 78th minute penalty that was scored by Brian Horton, only to be disallowed by referee Ron Challis for encroachment. Horton retook the penalty, but this time it was saved, and Palace held on for a 1-0 victory.
Alan Mullery was none too happy. As he chased Challis down the tunnel to complain and demand an explanation for the retaken penalty, some enterprising Palace fan nailed him with a well-aimed cup of coffee. Never a man to shy away from a dramatic episode or two, Mullery spun on his heel, pulled some change from his pocket and declared “That’s all you’re worth, Crystal Palace!” before sticking two fingers up at the crowd. Unfortunately for him, regardless of how much Palace were worth, they had won, and they followed up their victory in the cup with another in the league later that year. And so one of the most unique derbies in British football was born; not out of anything as mundane as geography or cross-town rivalry, but through the egos of two men who hated each other.
‘The Team of the 80s’ & Relegation, Again
Critical within the club’s success were a crop of young players who were rising fast in the football world. The likes of Jim Cannon, Vince Hilaire, Kenny Sansom and Billy Gilbert were all pivotal to the squad, with the latter trio also being part of the youth team that had been so heavily invested in by Malcolm Allison. The fruits of Allison’s labour was beginning to pay off, as the youth team won two FA Youth Cups in a row between 1976 and 1978. A year later, the senior squad was vying for trophies too; the 1978-79 season saw Palace vying for promotion with Sunderland and by now fierce rivals Brighton. Another famous last-fixture match beckoned, and the team duly rose to the occasion with a 2-0 home win over Burnley to clinch not only promotion, but the Second Division championship as well. This young and promising team were duly dubbed the ‘Team of the 80s’ by the press, in reference to the young age of the squad heading into the next decade of English football. They did well to live up to that name in their last season in the 70s, too, with Palace spending the first half of the 1979-80 season on the top of the league. However, the inexperienced team let it slip, and slid down to a nevertheless respectable 13th for what was at that point the club’s highest ever finish.
The Venables era was to come to a screeching halt the next season, as the club’s slide continued and Venables left Palace for QPR. Perhaps more importantly, Ron Noades bought the club from Raymond Bloye as Palace endured a horrible year to fall back into the Second Division. Noades spent spent a couple of seasons dallying as Palace floated around the lower half of the Second Division. It was in the 1984-85 season that Noades hit gold, however, with his appointment of 29 year old Steve Coppell. Coppell, with Ian Evans as his assistant, began to implement changes to revitalise the squad and rescue Palace from the mire of a constant battle against relegation.
His first, and most famous, moves were to bring in a new pair of strikers, named Ian Wright and Mark Bright. Wright, an anomaly in footballing terms, had all but given up on his dream of playing football for a living at the age of 21 when Crystal Palace scout Peter Prentice happened upon him playing for Greenwich Borough. Prentice got Wright a trial at Palace, and Coppell was suitably impressed to offer Wright a professional contract just three months short of his 22nd birthday. Bright, two years Wright’s senior, had been a pro since he was 19, but he was going through his own career troubles. In two seasons at Leicester, he had managed only six goals in 42 appearances, and was bought for a reasonably cheap £75,000.
Wrighty, Brighty & The FA Cup Final
‘Wrighty and Brighty’, as the pair came to be known, proved to be the most potent attacking pair Palace ever fielded, with the two scoring a combined 182 goals in their Palace careers having joined and left within a year of each other. The goals of the duo helped keep Palace up in Coppell’s first season, and then were central figures in the club’s promotion push over the next two years. In the 1988-89 season, a swashbuckling Palace side missed out on automatic promotion by a single point, and when they fell to a 3-1 away loss at Blackburn in the first leg of the playoffs it looked like another near miss. However, Coppell rallied his troops, and a rocking Selhurst Park saw Palace win 3-0 in extra time of the return leg to once again return to the First Division.
Noades saw this opportunity as a chance to firmly establish Palace as a top flight club, and opened his chequebook to back Coppell firmly. Andy Gray returned for £500,000, and more importantly, one of Palace’s finest players, Nigel Martyn signed for £1 million, then a British record fee for a goalkeeper. Palace ended up finishing 15th, but it was in the FA Cup where the memories were made. Wins against the likes of Portsmouth and Rochdale had propelled Palace to a semi-final against the mighty Liverpool, who had destroyed them 9-0 in their last meeting. However, Palace battled manfully, equalising late on to take the game to extra time at 3-3. In the 109th minute, with Palace under the cosh, they won a corner to ease pressure. The ball was floated in by John Salako, flicked on at the near post, and Alan Pardew wrote himself into Palace folklore by burying his header to send Palace to the FA Cup final.
3rd Place & Steve Leaves
Despite losing the final on a replay to Manchester United, Palace had signalled their intent, and also the talent of their squad. The 1990-91 season was to be Palace’s best ever, with a team bursting with talent and led by the talented Coppell. Players such as Nigel Martyn, Eric ‘Ninja’ Young and Andy Thorn formed the core of a solid defence, with the likes of Pardew, Gray, Salako, Eddie McGoldrick and captain Geoff Thomas running the game in midfield. And, of course, up front there was the magical Wrighty and Brighty partnership, with Wright having a renaissance after his poor 1989-90 season and the newly arrived Stan Collymore providing a big, powerful alternative off the bench. Palace had some truly memorable results - a 3-0 win over Manchester United, a 1-0 win over Liverpool on live TV and a thrilling 4-3 win over Wimbledon were all highlights of a season where Palace eventually finished third.
It was by some margins the highest the club had ever finished, and remains so. The 1990-91 squad still remains the best team Crystal Palace had ever had, and its dismantling over the following years was an absolute shame. Even more annoyingly, and because God hates Palace, the side had no opportunity to take part in the European competition it earned. Thanks to the European competition ban Liverpool earned English sides in the aftermath of the Heysel Stadium disaster, this wonderfully talented side missed out on the chance to ever play in Europe.
Off-field drama was to come, however. Throughout the 70s and 80s, in a time where hooliganism often bred racism in the stands, Palace - along with the likes of West Brom - had been a safe haven for black and ethnic minority players, with the likes of Wright, Bright, Salako and Hilaire all having plied their trade at Selhurst. That welcoming stance towards ethnic minorities stretched back to the likes of Ricky Heppolette and Tony Collins, and it was notable how shocked Palace fans were by the notorious Paul Canoville incident, where Chelsea fans roundly booed and racially abused their own debutant black footballer at Selhurst Park. This long history took something of a battering, however, when in 1991 chairman Ron Noades nonchalantly declared that “when you're getting into mid-winter in England, you need a few hard white men to carry the artistic black players through” on a Channel 4 documentary.
The knock on effects of Noades’ casual racism were profound. Ian Wright was outraged, leaving the club soon after, with Mark Bright leaving the club a year later. Palace were one of the founder members of the newly-minted FA Premier League, but without their lethal strikeforce and with John Salako still recovering from a brutal cruciate injury, Palace did what they do best and got relegated. This prompted Steve Coppell’s departure, to be replaced by his assistant Alan Smith. The following season they got promoted once more, but it was again a grim season, marked by the now infamous Cantona Kung Fu kick. Palace’s home game against Manchester United was well into the second half when United’s talisman Eric Cantona lashed out in frustration after being clipped one too many times by Palace defenders, and promptly got sent off. Alex Ferguson, noticing his star player’s rising ire, dispatched a kit man to escort him back to the bench, but before he could get there Cantona snapped. Mathew Simmons, a young, ignorant and - let’s not beat around the bush here - racist Palace fan had shouted abuse at the French striker, and Cantona replied in the most iconic of fashions by fly kicking him in the fucking face. Still, that was rather the least of Palace’s troubles, as the side once more got relegated at the end of the 1994-95 season.