February 28 2010

Neil Warnock

At least our 1-1 draw against Doncaster Rovers stopped the losing sequence, reflects Jamesey.

We are living through troubled times currently, with our second spell of administration in a decade or so.

I am not too sad about losing a chairman who, with his lack of interest and money, had become a major liability to Crystal Palace Football Club.

All the goodwill that Simon Jordan enjoyed when he bought our club had long since evaporated from this columnist's point of view.

Simon may have been a whizz-bang mobile phone entrepreneur but after the "honeymoon" of the first few years, he palpably demonstrated that he wasn't exactly brilliant at running a football club.

He did oversee our rise to the Loadsadosh-ship, I hear you cry. Well, yes, that was with a big heap of good fortune and the magic effect of the Dowie phenomenon before the glitter started to wear thin.

Anyhow Mr Jordan is now history and at least our trip to the Keepmoat Stadium (Feb 27) brought some consolation after the sort of hat-trick you really don't want - three losses on the trot. And the point gained from the match took us out of the bottom three.

But to return to the issue of leadership, although frankly we are well rid of Mr Jordan, how will we cope if, as seems likely now, our manager Neil Warnock moves over to west London to run Queens Park Rangers?

Like the majority of Palace supporters, I would imagine, I had always intensely disliked Neil, putting him down as a loud-mouthed, whingeing, moaning Yorkshire toss-pot.

But since he became the manager of CPFC I have developed a great admiration for the man and the way he works. He has produced great results against all the odds (mostly Simon Jordan) to keep us in the promotion frame until the impossible whammy of the 10-point deduction knocked the stuffing out of us although we still have plenty of time to recover and ensure our safety in the second tier.

He would be sorely missed and in our present predicament it would need a skilled and experienced operator to take over the reins.

The two names being bandied about as Neil's successor are Steve Coppell and Gareth Southgate. With the greatest respect Steve Coppell is the Palace past and should remain so, while Gareth Southgate lacks the guile and know-how, in my view.

So who could it be? That's anybody's guess...

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

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