Features

Palace's problems intensify

Author: John Harris
Date: 31/01/2010
Football betting

Crystal Palace are the latest in a long line of Football League clubs to enter administration, moving from Championship play-off contenders to relegation possibles after having the mandatory ten-point deduction imposed on them this week.

It is not the first time that the Eagles have flirted with financial disaster having been one of the first clubs to move into administration after Mark Goldberg's disastrous reign as chairman.

In March 1999, Goldberg called in the administrators after it was reported that the club had debts of £9million. He had bought Palace from former chairman Ron Noades for £23million and brought in Terry Venables as a high-profile manager on a massive salary.

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The likes of Tomas Brolin and Attilio Lombardi - briefly and bizarrely named manager in 1998 - passed through Selhurst Park's revolving doors as the club lurched from one crisis to another.

In the intervening decade, Palace's fortunes have ebbed and flowed with the luxuriantly coiffured Simon Jordan in charge since saving the club from extinction.

After making his money from mobile phone sales, Jordan found himself in charge of a football club at the age of 32 and the team did enjoy one season in the Premier League, after Iain Dowie had lifted them from relegation candidates to promotion via the play-offs in 2003-04.

However, the dream lasted just one season as Palace were relegated back to the Championship at the first time of asking and have been a mid-table team ever since.

Renowned for developing young players that they then sell on, rumours about Palace's financial problems have deepened in the last couple of months and the players' wages for November and December 2009 were both late being paid.

Neil Warnock has done well to keep his young team afloat in extremely difficult circumstances but there is the real danger now that Palace could be heading to the third tier of English football for the first time since 1977.

Warnock has at times not been able to name seven substitutes this season, while the sale of his star players, such as teenage striker Victor Moses, now seems inevitable.

Jordan announced his intention to sell the club last year and the club has twice since been subject to a transfer embargo, with the Palace players first informed that Jordan had "cashflow" problems at the end of November.

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