Midfielders

The main feature of Bert Head's successful team was a willingness to graft for each other, and while players like David Payne and Roger Hoy had this quality in abundance, the only outfield player who made his mark as an outstanding individual was the young midfielder from Croydon, Steve Kember. Although he was still only 20 years old in the promotion year of 1969, he had been a first team regular for over three years and there had never been any doubt that he was bound for the First Division, be it with Palace or with a larger club. He had everything you could ask for in a midfield player, being both a tenacious ball winner and always intelligent and adventurous with his distribution, and the Palace team was built around his skills for the five years leading up to his sudden departure in 1971, when he was sold to Chelsea for a record fee of £170,000. This was a great shock for the team and the fans, but the truth was that since going up they had failed to make progress, and Kember had little choice but to leave if he was to stand a chance of pressing his claims for a place in the England team. The great shame was that he joined a Chelsea side in serious decline, and never made it beyond the national Under-23 team, because in the right environment he could have become one of the great players of the Seventies.

Steve Kember

After rather fading into obscurity with Leicester, he answered Terry Venables' call to rejoin his old club in 1978, and his experience and devotion to the cause was the single most important factor in Palace's successful push for promotion, although the kudos went mostly to the precocious youngsters, several of whom had benefitted years earlier from Kember's laudable interest in coaching juniors in his own time. It was no surprise that Kember was the fans' choice as manager after Dario Gradi was sacked in 1981, but he was given a pitifully short time in which to prove himself, being sacked after six months and replaced by Mullery. I am sure I am not alone in thinking that someone who had done so much for Palace, and who still has such an affinity with the supporters, deserved better treatment, although Kember's innate dignity prevents him from expressing any grudge against the club.

There has been nobody since who I would consider so adept as Kember in every department, although there have been several midfielders to admire for their own particular qualities. Kember's successor in 1971 - who had also been his predecessor until 1965 - was Bobby Kellard; energetic, equally dogged, and also a big favourite with the fans, but without the creative imagination that was so needed in that struggling side. Kellard in turn was superseded by two Scotsmen who were very disappointing in their different ways; Charlie Cooke had been a great player, but had little left to give Palace, while Iain Philip - at the time Palace's most expensive signing , at £115,000 - was a star of the future who came to nothing, lasting just a year before returning to Dundee.

Allison's first, woeful season in charge was characterised by indecision concerning selection that saw several inappropriate players used in midfield, including Mel Blyth, Jim Cannon, Derek Jeffries and Don Rogers, with only Jeff Johnson and Mark Lindsay looking vaguely at home. After Terry Venables had padded round for a few games, Allison's best period came when Nicky Chatterton combined with Martin Hinshelwood and Phil Holder in midfield, a solid, hard working unit which nearly took Palace to Wembley, and should have won promotion in 1976. Holder, formerly with Spurs, was a pugnacious little footballer in the mould of Bobby Kellard, while Hinshelwood was infinitely more elegant, although desperately fragile. Chatterton was somewhere between the two of them, and although he also had frequent interruptions through injury, he was a fixture in Palace's team for five years, until finally being replaced by Kember in 1978, and moving to Millwall. Chatterton was typical of the kind of 'worker' that most good teams contain, very much a team player like David Payne or, latterly, Alan Pardew, who also scored his share of goals each season, and who managed to win most genuine fans over, despite being the 'boo-boy' for a while. For a couple of seasons Chatterton was required to do the running around on behalf of George Graham, known as 'Stroller', and never was a nickname more apt. Graham had been a member of Arsenal's double-winning side, and had once scored the winning 'Goal of the Season' on The Big Match, against Palace. He was undoubtedly a skilful player in possession of the ball, slowing the play down and opening up obscure avenues of attack, but he seemed to miss nearly as many games through suspension as through injury, and his cynicism as a player has since found expression through the teams he has gone on to manage.

The most successful midfield combination of the Seventies was the one that formed the core of Terry Venables' Second Division Championship winners of 1979, comprising Kember, Peter Nicholas and Jerry Murphy, with the occasional contribution from Terry Fenwick. Peter Nicholas first came into the side as a makeshift defender, but once moved to the right of midfield it soon became obvious that he was set to become one of the game's natural captains; hard in the tackle and strong going forward, from early on he was spoken of as the heir to Terry Yorath's Welsh crown. His contemporary, Jerry Murphy, couldn't have been more different, and relied on the endeavours of Kember and Nicholas to allow him to practice his ambitious, audacious and often sublime skills. Murphy loved to show what he could do by delicately chipping the ball with backspin wherever possible, but although everyone knew what a good player he was, he ultimately let himself down because he wasn't able to graft in the same way as someone like Nicholas and consequently became stuck in a very deep rut at Palace, finally being the last of Venables' great team to leave in 1985, Jim Cannon excepted.

When Palace went up in 1979, Venables' most important addition to the side was Gerry Francis, an exceptional player at one time with QPR, but by now significantly slower than he needed to be, although he was superb in midfield in that wonderful first half of the season, and still showed glimpses of genius. After everything collapsed the following year, Francis followed Venables back to Loftus Road, leaving the midfield in the hands of such players as the would-be boy wonder Shaun Brooks, the portly David Price, and a variety of uninspiring characters like Steve Lovell, Gary Stebbing and Henry Hughton. Steve Galliers offered little more than manic effort and a frightening tackle, but matters only really improved when another former Wimbledon man, Steve Ketteridge, linked up with Kevin Taylor, and Palace finally started winning again in 1985. Ketteridge in particular would chase everything, and Taylor could play a bit of football, and with these two solid in the middle Coppell was able to build a simple, effective structure that has evolved along the same lines ever since. Where Ketteridge was weakest was in going forward, and he was replaced by Andy Gray, by instinct a striker, but who looked a natural once switched to a creative midfield role. Gray's successful conversion meant that, with himself and Taylor both exclusively right-sided, Palace were on the look out for a new left-footer, and the man plucked by Steve Coppell from the obscurity of Crewe Alexandra - Geoff Thomas - was to prove one of his shrewdest buys. With Gray throwing himself all over the place and being generally flash, Thomas applied himself to the task of holding everything together in the middle, fiercely protective of the ball once in possession and organising those around him, which led to him becoming the obvious choice as captain after Jim Cannon had gone.

Geoff Thomas

Thomas was an outstanding success in his first season, but was forced to miss the second half of the1988-89 promotion season with an injury, which left the midfield places to be fought out by Super Alan Pardew, Glenn Pennyfather and, most impressively, Dave Madden. Pardew's sturdy contribution was to grow in importance throughout the year, although he was never as powerful as Thomas, but as a creative force Dave Madden was the key player, often showing skills far beyond what one would have expected from a reject from Reading. Madden lost his place the following season after the return of the prodigal son, Andy Gray, but when Thomas was forced to play in defence his place went instead to Pardew, who held on to it all season. Madden finally got a look in only at the very end of the season, and came on as a substitute in the two Wembley finals before leaving on a free transfer, for what reason we have yet to discover.

As the 1989-90 season wore on, with Gray forced to play wide on the right wing, Geoff Thomas gradually began to come back to his best form, and showed some of his nicest touches in the Cup games, including a cracking equaliser against Portsmouth and some assured and incisive passing against Liverpool and Manchester United. In the expectation that Thomas will add to his already considerable talents with another year's experience in Division One, I have no hesitation in selecting him for my team together with Steve Kember, although I am bound to say that Jerry Murphy was always a favourite of mine, and if I was able to select only his best moments he would be a major contender.