The unsinkables march on...

I don't know about you, but I'm almost beginning to like this administration malarkey. Another massive game, another shiny three points for the Eagles - this time in the unspeakably galmorous surrounds of Scunthorpe, the only town in England to contain the word cu….well, you know what I mean. Pressed for time, I was a little concerned as to when I'd find the time to provide a summary of the day. Thankfully for me, our very own Dave stepped up to the plate with this quite magnificent email. Uncompromising in detail and majestic in scope, a better summary of the day you will be hard pressed to find. Over to you David...

"Firstly have to say that Scunny goes straight into top 3 worst towns I have been to in England - along with Rotherham and Gillingham. We had the misfortune to arrive in Scunny at 11.45 after a quick journey up a very foggy A1, picking up Dan C up at Swiss Cottage on the way. We drove straight to the ground to see how far it was from the town centre - Flynn said he could see the ground, at which point we all laughed. And then we all saw a big Rainham steel ad on the side and realised it was actually the ground. Hard to describe - looked like an old warehouse, or some kind of industrial storage centre. Apparently the first stadium built in the modern era. Joke. In the middle of a rancid retail park with the largest Tesco that I have ever seen - who says Tesco have killed off any type of local business?

We parked up in the town centre to be confronted by what can only be described as Britain's ugliest and most terrifying family. If one moment could capture the essence of a town this was it. After paying £1.50 to park for 4 hours in Scunthorpe's most central car park we had an explore around town. 10 minutes later we were in the pub. It made Croydon look like Florence. Town planners have much to answer for. Honestly the most depressing place I have ever been. People looked so miserable, and that was their life. They'll never escape. They don't deserve this - they are good people as well (well some)! As Cooper's mate informed us, anyone with anything about them leaves at 18, especially fit women who either get out or have to stay cos they get pregnant.

After finding a half decent sports bar Barracuda (a South African themed Walkabout - Luke took this pretty well to be fair) and annoying a Liverpool fan in there who was watching the Mickey Mouse Derby, we drove the 2 miles over to the ground. After I asked the car parking people at Tesco if there was a car par anywhere ("you are in one mate" laughed the local. Until he realised he was a local) we paid £3 to park in the ground car park (surely more car parking spaces than Glanford Park capacity) & went over to the Farmhouse Pub right opposite ground. As per usual we got to the ground just as players coming out, and discovered that sometimes first impressions can be absolutely spot on. It was as big a hole inside the ground as out.

About 700 Palace I reckon, I was hoping for 1,000, still not too bad. Subdued atmosphere really, although this might have had something to do with our really poor first half performance. We got absolutely battered 1st half - one man kept us in it - Matt Lawrence!! Best performance in a Palace shirt? Put in two goal saving tackles and won everything. Picked up the pieces from dreadful first half displays from Clint Hill and Claude. Scunny player had miss of the season when we were all resigned to it hitting the back of the net. Deserved to be 2 down, and were second to everything, but we thought that if we could escape 0-0 to half time we could have a chance of nicking an undeserved lead.

Then everything brightened up. Scunny brought on some no name numpties from the local council, and then introduced Geoff Hurst!!! Hardly got any reception from the crowd at all, people probably confused as to why he was there - was it really him?! Cheered up by England's World cup winning hero (he made a couple of gags about West Ham) Palace were a different team second half - obviously they got a half time bollocking from Sir Neil. Matched them physically and started putting them under pressure, although the Ambrose goal was probably our first shot on target. Great composure as he had a lot of time before drilling it in the corner. After that Dijali came on and his pace and skill caused the Scunny defence big problems. He got their full back sent off after bursting through onto a ball from Carle. Harsh red, but you see them given. After that Dijali had 2 fantastic chances but showed that he needs to work on his finishing / final ball. Still, very promising, and another fantastic Academy prospect.

Scunny's goal came as no surprise (always happened when you miss chances to go 2 up), although it was fairly gutting, coming around the '5/6 minutes left to go' time which we seem to love conceding in at the moment. We sensed after that there was going to be a winner - unsurprisingly I thought that it would be Scunny. Then in the 93rd minute, Clyney broke forward and fed Danns in the box. Great first touch to bring inside on left foot and create some room, before unleashing a superb shot into the corner. We just about saw the ball head past keepers outstretched arm on it's way to the corner. Cue utter pandemonium. Cooper and his hat were down the steps and at the front in a matter of seconds, followed by the rest of us. Proper celebration, hugging anyone, right on top of the pitch. Palace players as usual went ballistic. It made the 450 mile round trip so worthwhile. Whistle went 30 seconds later, cue fantastic celebrations, players all going mental in front of us, Warnock doing a Dowie's punch. Fantastic, very emotional. Fairly undeserved, but happens to us all the time.

Few drinks in pub watching England beat the Welsh, and the Quins boys doing us proud, to cap a remarkable day of sport. Think all of us were still drained from the game and in a state of shock. That was a huge win, absolutely massive, one of the most important results in recent times. A couple of Scunthorpe fans told us we didn't deserve it but fair play, and they were right to be honest. It was a smash and grab. But they were good lads. Couldn't imagine a Chelsea / Arsenal / Man U fan being so gracious in defeat. Journey down M1 quick, Let it be/ Alan Lee & Glad All over played over and over again. Flynn abusing people queuing outside exclusive Mayfair nightclubs; we certainly let central London know that Palace got a result!

Goes straight into top 10 away days. We deserved that last minute winner.

Donny away anyone?"

Wolves take a Buttering!

I've done this a day too late. I could have gone for 4 or 5 million on Monday!' Danny Butterfield

Over recent months I've managed to bag myself the unenviable reputation of being something of a bad luck charm. Soundly beat tough opposition, and I'll probably have missed the game. Get our pants pulled down at home by the likes of Scunthorpe and Doncaster however and you can guarantee I'll be there, with most of the other lads looking at me with a mixture of pity and barely concealed anger. Unfortunate as this is, it boded well for our midweek cup clash with Premiership fraudsters Wolves - in the midst of an unspeakably bad work related sh*t-storm, I was forced to forego my ticket at the last minute. 'We'll probably win 15-0, with Victor coming back to score 10 bicycle kicks' I quipped via email. Little did I know that the events which were to unfold would render that fabricated scenario entirely plausible by comparison. I wasn't there, but I think I can safely say that the 10,000 + hardy souls who turned up at fortress Selhurst will need to wait quite a while before they see something like that again.

Watching on from my living room (yes, Palace were actually on the box), it was evident that we were firmly in control from the word go. The match itself soon blossomed into a glorious affair, with Palace tearing apart their Premiership opponents with room to spare. Wolves found themselves not only out-muscled, but also out-thought and out-played. Our often-whinged-about direct style certainly did the trick, but there was no shortage of talent on show, with Palace equally commanding with the ball on the carpet as they were when it was collecting snow in the outer reaches of the earth's atmosphere. Matty 'Shaggy' Lawrence - so often on the sharp end of fans' vitriol - was imperious at the back, whilst the oft-maligned Alan Lee put in a Herculean shift up top, despite nearly having his head taken off in one particularly gruesome, blood soaked (albeit accidental) incident. Neil Danns and the recently recalled Nicky Carle buzzed around midfield with impressive results, although you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who didn't impress on the night.

That said, there was one man who managed to stand out from the pack; a Palace old boy so often the unsung hero, who will no doubt be forcing his grandkids to watch the video of this game well into jeriactric-dom. Indeed, whilst Danny Butterfield can be described as many things, 'goal machine' isn't a term that I'd imagine he's overly familiar with. 7 goals in 252 appearances prior to this game would certainly attest to that. Playing as a makeshift striker against Wolves however, it looked like he'd spent his life sticking balls in the back on the net. 6 minutes and 58 seconds - the exact time it took Sir Danny to hit one of Selhurst's most famous hatricks. Just to clarify, that's a goal every 2.19 minutes. Unbelievable. Back in my living room, I was struggling to comprehend the events which were unfolding before my eyes. Having barely got over his second, the third had me reaching for the TV, wondering whether it had suffered some sort of cataclysmic technical failure. What on earth was going on? Had I inadvertently ended up in some sort of bizarre, work-induced twilight zone? The texts which flooded in - several of them from the game - appeared to confirm that the imnpossible was in fact, very much achievable. Even Merson couldn't believe it!

Joking aside, this was a result which meant so much to the club, from the players to the fans and everyone in between. From a financial perspective, the cash injection brought about by safe passage to the next round (and a home-game with premiership big-boys Aston Villa) will be much welcomed. On the pitch, it confirmed what we already knew; the spirit and belief in that dressing room is something else. Where lesser teams may have been divided by administration, it appears to have succeeded only in heightening the sense of unity in this particular camp. Warnock once again gathered the players in the centre circle at the end of the game - a display of defiance which wasn't far away from bringing a lump to the throat of all who worship at the red and blue altar. Where do we go from here? Who knows! One thing's for sure though - as our good mate Jason put it in a text from the game - 'love it, can't get enough at the moment!' Too true mate, too true.

Dan

(not so) Black Monday

Fresh from the morale boosting win against Peterborough, fans turned their attention to that most dreaded of days - transfer window deadline day. Whilst this bizarre phenomenon may give Sky Sports News the chance to wet themselves silly for the lion's share of 24 hours, for those of us in financial dire straits, it makes for a nerve shredding experience. The loss of Victor was a bitter pill for us all, but at the very least it was expected. However, little was known about how far the administrator was willing to go in the name of further cash injections. Would he try and keep the squad together, knowing that a League 1 bound team would do little to attract outside investment? Or would he take the money - flog all of our player assets, get some quick cash through the door and then hope for the best? For many of us, the later didn't bear thinking about. Speroni, Danns, Ambrose, Clyne - all up for grabs and all likely to go for rock bottom prices. Swanson might have been loving dicking about with his Star Trek style transfer machine in the Sky Sports News studio, but most Palace fans were spending the day dodging work and getting heavily acquainted with the refresh button.

As was to be expected, the rumours soon started swirling. Ambrose spotted at Sheffield Wednesday! Danns having medical at Southampton! Clyne on his way to Wolves! Well, as it turned out, there was more than a grain of truth to that last one. News soon began to filter through that Wolves - to be our opponents only two days later - had offered our mercurial right-back 10,000 big ones a week to move to the Black Country. To be fair, even I'd consider moving up there for that sort of wedge.

But as we braced ourselves for the worst, word got out that Clyney had turned them down, choosing instead to stick around and fight for the cause. Nice one Nate! Better still, 5pm came and went without news of further departures. But could it be true? Personally, I wasn't sure whether to be doing cartwheels or crying into my (well worn) keyboard. Everyone knew that the club was in dire need of player sale generated funds and yet... no action. The optimist in me saw this as a sure sign of an imminent buyer, but the devil on my shoulder persisted in continually whispering 'imminent collapse' into my ear. All of which added up to a very confusing state of affairs. I guess we'll only understand the hows and whys much further down the line - fingers crossed that there was method behind the madness after all.

In terms of losing players, we're not out of the woods yet - indeed, with the loan window reopening in two weeks, we may yet see the team broken up, albeit on a temporary basis. Still, in the absence of little resembling fact, I'm choosing to stay positive. The fact that Danns and Clyne chose to copy our great leader by sticking with the club in its time of need speaks volumes about the current spirit in the camp. If we can continue to hold onto our lads then maybe, just maybe, the dream scenario of a heroic play off push could yet still be on the cards. At the very least, let's just thank our lucky stars that we made it though to the other side with something that still resembles a squad. In our current predicament, that's more than anyone could ask for. Onward!

Dan