“To boo, or not to boo...that is the question”

In football, as in life, people get frustrated when things aren't going their way: anger is a natural emotion. What's more, if we lived in a world of never ending support and blind loyalty people could quite happily coast along, things can stagnate. Without criticism, how would anyone ever be held to account? As ever, it’s how we chose to voice opinion that is crucial: criticism should be constructive rather than abusive.

Posted in conjunction with Football Fans Today

http://footballfanstoday.co.uk/category/2-championship/crystal-palace/

Can you ever have too much of a good thing? Maybe, but good things are nice and there’s a reason we keep on wanting them. More precisely, if we have good things every day or maybe even special things every day, do they start to become that little less special? In simple terms, people like steak because in the main it’s something you have for a special treat. However, if you have steak every day, then the specialness starts to wear off and steak becomes just like a ham sandwich: the norm.

The usual line with this thinking is that after a while you will become immune to the delights of a good T-Bone, medium rare, but human nature being what it is the reaction to having steak everyday is actually to want it even more: breakfast, lunch as well as dinner. That’s where the problem lies, people very quickly get accustomed to the good life and it’s a shock to the system when it’s taken away. Rather than appreciate the nice things when they come your way, once you’ve had a taste, people simply want it more and more and all the time. They want it more than someone that’s never had it in the first place. It’s the law of raised expectation.

15^th, 21^st, 20^th and 17^th. These are the last four final positions Crystal Palace have occupied in the Championship league table. At best these have been campaigns of lower mid table mediocrity, at worst; desperate, dramatic fights for survival, including one last day shoot out. Administration, point deductions and having to play Calvin Andrew, all dark moments in a period of instability and poverty, both on and off the pitch. Times were bleak and obituaries for the club could easily have been published and yet, despite it all and rather incredibly, 2012/13 has seen goals, wins and a full on tilt at promotion to the Premier League. Smiles and back patting all round? Not after the last few games.

In recent years, Palace fans have been served a steady diet of spam rather than steak tartare and so this season with its incredible forward thinking football, great comebacks and a 30 goal front man there has been a general upswing in optimism, not to mention some resurgence at the box office in crowd attendance. However with the general upswing in form has also come a rise in the expectations and a hope for top flight football has started to give way to desperation.

This has been a season when victories have been regularly on the menu after the wartime rationing of the immediate post-administration days so why, currently, does there seem so much despondency and also pent up frustration?

Losing 3-0 to your arch rivals doesn’t help. It was a largely limp performance but until the first Brighton goal, Palace had been in the ascendancy. All fairly redundant arguing that now, but the lack of a response after going a goal down was worrying. Three defeats in a row at a time when an automatic promotion spot is begging to be taken in like a lost puppy, has also sharpened the emotions. Perhaps many fans are wary. Wary that this might be the chance, wary that something at Palace is usually waiting around the corner to go wrong. Maybe that’s why people have got so worked up: it’s now or never.

Perspective and context can be rather boring in a world of instant gratification but while the results in recent weeks have been poor and not games many fans will have wanted to track down to watch with Manish and Steve Claridge at half past midnight, they need to be set against the backdrop of where the club has been and just how far it has come. The new owners, the CPFC 2010 consortium have given the club much needed stability after financial meltdown and also, in this fans eyes at least, worked diligently and creatively in their attempts to reconnect the club, fan base and local community.  On the pitch there haven’t been any quick fixes, the team struggling for much of the new owners first two seasons at the helm. There has not been big money thrown around, that was half the problem the last time around, but under the guidance of first Dougie Freedman and now Ian Holloway, some smart player recruitment and a continued emphasis on the club’s academy and young player development, results this season have picked up remarkably.

The team has started to stutter as we enter the final furlongs but traumatic events in the clubs recent past should perhaps mean affording the players, staff and management just the merest amount of slack. After all, I don’t think too may would have predicted being in a play-off spot since October and being six points removed from an automatic trip to the penthouse of the Premier League with six to play back on that sunny opening day in August.

That’s not to say everything’s perfect however. Recent performances, especially the 4-0 embarrassment against Birmingham City have been poor and it is inevitable that as a side climbs the table the bumps in the road become more jarring than they would be when stuck in neutral. Raised expectations are a necessary evil of starting to experience success and that is something - if this is not to be a flash in the pan season - that the club needs to get used to. Ian Holloway is an ambitious man, he wants to breed a culture of achievement, but then he must know more than most the pressures that come along with this.

It’s always difficult to know how far the posturing on social networks and the views of the ‘Twitterati’ speak for the majority but in the aftermath of recent defeats there has been abuse directed at players and the Chairman Steve Parish. In the stands I’ve heard grumblings about Holloway and the decisions he has been taking. It’s a frustration born out of a simple desire of fans to be back in the big time and as such, angry views being expressed this way should not merely be shouted down themselves, even if the abuse can sometimes rise to unrealistic and unsavoury levels.

For debate is healthy, and support, despite what it may say in the official rules of fandom should never be unyielding; blinkered one eyed backing causes its own problems. The excellent Times journalist George Caulkin may have been talking about the controversy stirred up by Paolo Di Canio’s arrival at the Stadium of Light but his words are powerful and can just as easily be applied to the discourse over just how unequivocal a fans support of their club should be and how much the audience should question those putting on the show:                     

‘The attempt to stifle debate is self-defeating and ludicrous, because the debate is important. Debate helped the game evolve to where it is. It challenges our perceptions, forces us to (at least temporarily) abandon our 

own certainties and listen to others.’

In football, as in life, people get frustrated when things aren't going their way: anger is a natural emotion. What's more, if we lived in a world of never ending support and blind loyalty people could quite happily coast along, things can stagnate. Without criticism, how would anyone ever be held to account? As ever, it’s how we chose to voice opinion that is crucial: criticism should be constructive rather than abusive.

For all Palace fans the last few weeks have been disappointing, a realistic dream of promotion seemingly coming off the rails just as the final destination is in sight, however the achievements of this season have been remarkable and at times the football has been breath taking. In terms of goals and wins this has been the best season in many years and that is not something to be sniffed at. Indeed, the very fact that people seem to be so unhappy that the club is not winning every single week now is a good sign for just how far things have progressed.