Mystify Crystal Palace News (Season 7)

Gravesen spent over an hour mingling with the crowd after the match, signing autographs and receiving their best wishes. Meanwhile, manager Neame faced the press and attempted to address some of the fan's concerns.

"Look, Thomas has made a tremendous contribution to the club over the past couple of seasons. His efforts have been appreciated by all of us around the club. Its obvious that the fans are disappointed to see him go."

Why then, Neame was asked, was the club parting with such a valuable player for such a small amount of cash? "You have to understand that this is not the totality of the deal. Modena will be sending us a young defender from the Italian youth academy. They're getting an experienced defender, and in return we're getting access to a talented young Italian who would otherwise not have been available to us."

So is Neame gambling on youth? "The short answer is yes. We knew what'd we get from Gravesen, but he was approaching the end of his career. Going with youth is obviously a risk, but I believe its well worth it. If you compare our list with those of the most of the sides in the Premier League, we look seriously undermanned. Now obviously we believe that the team spirit here at the club is worth something, but realistically if we want to cement a place in the Premiership, we need to take some risks in order to bridge that gap. This is a step in that direction."

This logic did not convince the fans however. One Palace supporter had this view. "The club has sold off a number of senior players in the last few weeks of last season, and also picked up a prize cheque for finishing on top of the First Division last season. That money still hasn't been spent, so I'm not convinced that parting with Gravesen was necessary. I guess we'll have to wait and see where that big wad of cash gets spent, but I'm not impressed so far."

After a clearout at the beginning of the season, culminating in the controversial transfer of defender Thomas Gravesen to Modena for a piddling £3.5 million, Crystal Palace manager has a healthy back account, but so far Neame appears happy to sit on this wad of cash. By the best estimates, Neame has approximately £15 million available to him, and Palace's squad is hardly the most credentialled in the Premier Division. Neame's unwillingness to take decisive action to strenthen the squad has caused rumblings of discontent amongst Palace fans, and the club hierarchy.

Rumour has it that Neame has made bids for a number of strikers on the transfer market in recent weeks, but has been repeatedly trumped by big-spending Italian clubs. However, recent results, and particularly Simone Loria's hat-trick at Portsmouth last week, suggest that Palace's apparently lack of firepower up front may not be as big a problem as first thought. Nevertheless, the bad blood stirred up by recent transfer deals has created a strained atmosphere at the club.

Neame issued a brief statement when I spoke to him at training, "The money is there, and when the right deal comes along I'll be spending it. We need to take a look at the players we already have, and see where our weaknesses are before we rush into anything." Neame refused to answer questions regarding his attempts to sign a striker, and returned to supervising training shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile, Davide Onorato, the young player for whom Neame traded Gravesen, has been training with Crystal Palace for the past few weeks, but is yet to make an appearance in the first team. Insiders report that the youngster is promising, but by no means the special talent that the club had been hoping for. The club is expected to sign another young defender from the English youth academy within the next week or two, but club officials remain tightlipped about exactly who this youngster is likely to be.

Towards the end of the first half, wily Steve Brown began to pull the Palace defense together, and the young defenders playing around him responded to his leadership, to staunch the flow of goals. Of course, with Palace going in three goals down at the half, and not having looked like troubling the scorers, it looked like a lost cause. Something special would be required for Palace to advance in the cup this season.

With the restart it became clear that that something special might not be beyond this Palace team. Watford's free-flowing play was stymied, and the young Palace forwards began to produce some magic moments of their own. On the hour Simone Loria, the most promising of the Palace forwards all season, produced a marvellous strike to offer the visitors a glimmer of hope. However that glimmer was snuffed out a few minutes later when Attilio Lombardo was sent off following a very nasty challenge on Watford midfielder Cristian Bliort. Although Crystal Palace struggled on manfully, with a spare man, Watford were always able to produce the answers, and the game was over as a contest.

At the press conference after the game, Crystal Palace manager Tim Neame refused to criticise the controversial Lombardo. "Look, its fair to say that Attilio and myself haven't seen eye to eye on everything. He's got a perspective on life that is a bit more ... relaxed ... than mine. But he played a good game today. I'm not saying he shouldn't have been sent off. That was a bad challenge, and if Cris was a Palace lad, I'd want the refs to protect him from that too. I'm just saying that I'm not going to judge a player's whole career on one little incident."

Meanwhile, the result has highlighted Palace's need for a world class striker in order to remain competitive in the Premier Division. However Neame refused to be rushed into a signing. "If you look at the goals scored today, the only one scored by a striker was the one Simone Loria got for us. Of course it'd be great if we could get hold of a quality striker, but its got to be the right player for the right price. We're negotiating with a couple of clubs and we'll see what comes of that."

"Here at Crystal Palace, we don't have the cash that some of the more successful clubs have to splash around. We can't afford to make mistakes with £15 million signings, because the odds are that the club can only make one, or maybe two of those signings. So we've been looking at ways that we can improve the talent at the club without having to spend vast amounts of money."

"The idea of this scheme was to entice some of the less well-off clubs to sign youth academy players on our behalf. Those clubs would receive a healthy payment, regardless of the quality of the player they signed. Obviously, we were hoping that, if enough clubs signed up for this scheme, we'd end up with one or two young stars. We were also willing to accept the risk that we'd end up with a lot of players who just didn't have what it would take to make it in the big leagues. That was the risk."

I asked Neame why the response had been so negative. "I think its fair to say that we didn't sell the deal as well as we could have. I probably should have gotten the marketing division onto it, instead of approaching the other managers myself."

The club has supplied us with the contracts they were hoping to sign with other clubs. We present a summary below, so that our readers can judge for themselves whether or not this was a good deal.

• Week 1: Crystal Palace buys a player (Player A) from Club X for £600,000
• Week 2: Club X signs a player (Player B), whose position is specified by Crystal Palace, from their local Youth Academy.
• Week 2: Club X loans Player B to Crystal Palace for 6 weeks.
• Week 7: Crystal Palace transfer lists Player A.
• Week 8: Player A is sold on the open market for some amount of cash £Y
• Week 8: Player B's loan period is over and he returns to Club X
• Week 9: Club X sells Player B to Crystal Palace. If the player is rated less than 10. the price paid by Crystal Palace will be £1,000,000, plus the amount of cash £Y. For higher rated players, Crystal Palace will pay the minimum transfer fee for Player B, e.g. if Player B is rated 12, Crystal Palace will pay £1,600,000.

The club was keen to note that the final price paid for the player would be based on the player's rating in Week 9. This means that the foreign club would have the potential to benefit if the new player responded to intensive training at Crystal Palace.

However the next ten weeks look like they will be a lot less pleasant for the club than they will be for Arneng. Crystal Palace have made some efforts this season to increase their depth up forward, but many pundits question whether even one of the seven strikers currently on the Palace list has what it takes to succeed in the Premier League. Only four of the seven have seen first team action this season, and with Neame often playing three strikers, the club's stocks have been stretched.

Coinciding with Arneng's injury, recent youth academy signing Peter Beadle has also injured himself. Beadle's injury apparently occurred during an intensive, behind closed doors, training session. The fact that Beadle has been undergoing this kind of training points to the fact that he is not the ready-made striker that neame was searching for, even when fit.

Neame was quick to jump to Beadle's defense. "Look, Peter's only been here for a couple of weeks, and now he's injured. I think its fair to say that he hasn't had much opportunity to show us what he can do." However, the Palace manager also confirmed that the club was still actively searching to buy a more mature striker to bolster their playing stocks.

The good news came in the person of Gregory Peres, who jetted in from Spain to join Crystal Palace for a four week loan. While some at the club have questioned the wisdom of loaning in a player, Peres seems likely to give Palace a little breathing room while they search for a longer term solution.

The final bad news came from Bruce Dyer, who called a press conference early this evening to announce that he will be retiring from the game at the end of the season. Watched by a number of club officials, the 34-year-old striker read a prepared statement, before answering questions. Dyer stated that he still felt he something to offer, but that "it is everybody's best interests for me to go at the end of this season." This statement lead to speculation that the aging star had been asked to leave, rather than reaching the decision to retire on his own.

When this speculation was raised with the club's manager, Tim Neame, he reacted angrily. "What Bruce is saying is that he is going out on top. He doesn't want to stay on as a player just to fade into obscurity, he wants to go out on a high. Bruce has stuck with the club while we were down the first division, and he's very proud of the part he played in pulling us back into the Premiership. Justifiably so." Neame refused to comment on rumours that the club had attempted to sign Simon Roger, who was transferred out of the club several seasons ago, as part of an attempt to persuade Dyer to play on.

Dyer's decision seems at odds with Palace stalwart Andy Linighan's thinking. Where Dyer is determined to leave on a high, Linighan seems content to fade slowly into the sunset. At 42, and not having played a game so far this season, the veteran defender is reportedly still yet to reach a decision regarding his future as a player.

Palace manager, Tim Neame, was quick to justify the Paula deal, in particular. "Look, the transfer rules are such that we can only set up one loan per week. Although Pedro's trip to Moanco is officially a sale, its just loan deal. Monaco were desperate for a defender. They couldn't wait for next week, when we could have written up as a loan, so instead we offered them this deal, where they buy Paula, and sell him back to us in six weeks time.There's nothing to worry about."

Even so, the two departures leave Palace's defensive stocks looking decidedly flimsy. Neame tried to explain this as well, "We can't be relegated this season, and we can't win the league either. There's not much for us to play for, so we are taking the opportunity to expose some of the lads to some different methods and see how it goes. The lads will get more training, as well as an opportunity to play in some different competitions. Obviously, we will be playing every game to win, but a lot of the heat has gone out of this season already, so now is a good time to follow this through."

Meanwhile, the club's prospects in attack have been slightly improved with the arrival of Aaron Mokoena last week. Mokoena was rushed into the first eleven, and was impressive this week, scoring the second of Palace's three goals before tiring noticeably in the second half.

One of the surprises planned for the day was revealed this week, with former Palace player Dean Holdsworth returning to the fold. Holdsworth is also planning to retire at the end of the season, and it appears that the club has a Blues Brothers-esque plan to "get the band back together" for one last game. The club did not comment on specifics about the celebrations, but did confirm that the day would be "a special one for all Crystal Palace fans."

Injured striker Johna Arneng is reported to be desparate to be fit for this special game, but the medical staff advise that he is still 50-50 at best. One player who looks certain to miss the celebrations is central defender Joaquim Martins, whose loan period at East Fife will carry him through to the end of the season. His stay at East Fife has been thrown into some turmoil by a change of management at the Scottish club, but Crystal Palace are hopeful that the loan conditions will be fulfilled by the new management.

Also on hand to farewell the departing players was almost all of the Palace squad. Johna Arneng was able to successfully complete his rehbilitation from a nasty knee injury acquired earlier in the season, and was able to take the field alongside his retiring team mates. The only players missing were central defenders Pedro Paula and Joaquim Martins, both still fulfilling loan commitments. Both players will be returning to Crystal Palace in the new season, and together with new recruit Dave Challinor, will give the club a much stronger defense line-up.

The limitations of the current defense were clear today, to all except those viewing the game through red-and-blue-tinted glasses. Certainly Linighan's place in the side seemed to have more to do with sentiment, than with his current form. But its at this time of the year that the heart can afford to over-rule the head. Going into the game, Chelsea were already guaranteed relegation, and Crystal Palace guaranteed a mid-table place, regardless of today's results. With uncertainty still remaining over just how many English teams would be granted UEFA cup places next season, Crystal Palace arguably had a place in Europe still to play for, but this possibility certainly did not seem to affect the game today.