Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. This is club 84/92. The best way to follow his journey and read all of the previous pieces is by subscribing here
You know the joke by now: nature is healing because Crystal Palace are 12th in the Premier League. A wretched start to the season – one win in 13 league matches – tricked us into thinking a crisis may be building. Since the start of December, only six teams have taken more points. The midtable magnetism is strong with this one.
Palace’s long-term consistency is astonishing by any measure, unprecedented in the history of England’s top flight. For 11 completed league seasons in succession since promotion, they have finished between 10th and 15th position, taken between 41 and 49 points and won between 11 and 14 matches.
Within that, some variation. Palace have had nine different managers (three foreign, two former England managers, four other British coaches). They have overhauled the squad twice over. They have started seasons slowly and finished strongly and vice versa. It always seems to end in roughly the same result come June, before the cycle repeats.
The Crystal Palace experience does pass comment on the Premier League and the glass ceilings and floors that reinforce its structure for clubs without uber-rich owners or historic magnitude (and thus game-changing global marketing reach). Palace are one of four current Premier League clubs (with Southampton, Ipswich and Brentford) never to have spent more than £30m on a player. They have only sold two players for more than £30m too.
There will be Palace supporters who feel more strongly about that than others and will accuse those in charge of a lack of ambition. In the main, they are probably too young – or too recently interested – to remember two periods of administration in the last 30 years and the 2-2 draw at Hillsborough in 2010 that preserved their Championship status and may have stopped Palace from going under. Spending beyond their means has never really been an option since promotion; history is its own brake pedal.
There have been years when certainty and consistency skirted dangerously close to stagnancy. In three of four seasons between 2019 and 2023, Palace scored 30, 40 and 41 league goals at a rate of under one per game. Roy Hodgson was manager for the majority of that period. His deep connection to the club, and the affinity of key players for him, distracted from aesthetic monotony.
Eventually though, inertia began to creep in. Hodgson didn’t pick younger players as often as he could have. The team slipped into pragmatism as a defence mechanism rather than because it was what made the most sense. Without distraction, people began to wonder whether the horizon was closing in and their world getting smaller.
Hodgson’s presence was a matter of identity as much as ambition; that’s a crucial part of this story. Were Crystal Palace bobbing along in midtable without any discernible connection between supporters and the club, mutiny may have been more likely.
That connection does exist. Selhurst Park is a little grubby in its corners and likely requires significant redevelopment to meet the next age of spectator demand. One day that change will come, although it might well take a newer, richer owner.
Crystal Palace 0-0 Bournemouth (Saturday 19 April)
- Game no: 85/92
- Miles: 295
- Cumulative miles: 16,493
- Total goals seen: 219
- The one thing I’ll remember in May: There are few players I enjoy watching more in the country than Eberechi Eze. The way he slows down and quickens up the match with the ball at his feet is transfixing.
But there is a south London soul here that is an antidote to any accusations of homogeneity within the Premier League machine. The Sainsbury’s in the stand, the Wilfried Zaha mural and the walk to Norwood Junction, entire streets pedestrianised by volume of people alone, are unique to this place and I love them all.
There is something pleasing about walking up a narrow set of concrete stairs to a press box which offers a view that contains roughly 40 per cent pitch and 60 per cent pillar, roof and wall. That’s easier to say when you come here three times a season rather than three times a month, but this is the charm.
Whether retaining that core spirit of the local area, in the squad and within the club’s ethos, has platformed the last 15 months is open to interpretation and your own soppy romanticism (guilty as charged). But it’s certainly true that, while Palace may indeed still be 12th in the league – make your jokes now – positivity has rarely abounded quite like this.
Last season, Palace scored 57 league goals; their highest ever total in the top flight. Related: Jean-Philippe Mateta became the first Crystal Palace player to score more than 15 goals in all competitions in a top-flight season since Andrew Johnson in 2004-05. Also related: Oliver Glasner had his first full season in charge and attempted to overhaul the playing style of his two predecessors Hodgson and Patrick Vieira.
Under Glasner, Palace have never been perfect. At the start of this season the loss of Michael Olise to Bayern Munich, the fatigue of Mateta after the Olympics, the injury concerns of Adam Wharton and the transfer saga surrounding Marc Guehi caused a loss of impetus that threatened to undo much of 2023-24’s best work.
Over the last five months, Palace have had arguably their best period since August to December 1990, when they briefly established themselves as the third best team in the country. It’s not just the league form, the run to the FA Cup final and the league double over Brighton, although all help. It’s that everybody seems to be having so much fun in the process.
In central midfield, Wharton breaks up the play and pulls the strings. At right wing-back, Daniel Munoz is the right kind of chaos with his overlapping runs and touches in the penalty box. Mateta has become an elite striker in Selhurst. The verve of Eberechi Eze is possessed by few others in the country, treating Premier League pitches like south London cages. Ismaila Sarr’s growth has enabled Eze the time and space that makes Sarr’s own life more enjoyable.
Glasner is the leader of this movement and who knows how long they can keep hold of him. That is the lot of clubs of this size, the inevitable magnetism of the apex predators to your most valuable assets. The key, Glasner might say, is to enjoy everything while it lasts.
Crystal Palace teach us something about football fandom in general, particularly in an age where competition has been eroded to the point that your realistic ambition can become blunt. Football is an experience. If the eventual destination has become predictable, you have to sell the journey.
More than ever before, that is the sweet spot that Palace have now found. For too long everything was smothered in a blanket of certainty, to the point that safety itself became dangerous. Now there is fun in the unexpected, whether that be Eze taking on a defender or a team losing 5-0 one week and then thrashing Aston Villa at Wembley another.
It turns out that that is enough. There are ways to finish 12th and ways to be consistent that leave you dreaming rather than desperate to ignore the reality. Crystal Palace will step out at Wembley on 17 May with the chance to win their first ever major honour. When was the last time that they had a manager to believe in and a team to delight in watching like this? See how quickly you can fall head over heels in love again.
Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here
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