7 Times Being A Crystal Palace Fan Was Too Stressful

2. Pulis Walks

After a brilliant end to the 2013/14 season, Crystal Palace fans could have been forgiven for thinking that, with the experienced Tony Pulis in charge, the following season would be an uneventful one - how wrong they were. Palace started the 2013 season in disarray. With one win in their first eleven games and a chaotic transfer window that bought six players in on deadline day, Palace looked certain for the drop until The Baseball Capped One rocked up; claiming the scalp of Chelsea and engineering the classic 3-3 'Crystanbul' comeback that did for Liverpool's title challenge along the way. Despite all this, Pulis never felt like 'one of us'. Speaking about the club in terms of 'they' rather than 'we' should have probably served as a bigger hint than it did. However, none of us ever thought it would end like it did. Rumours throughout his tenure that he didn't see eye-to-eye with Chairman Steve Parish over the direction the club was taking refused to go away, with Parish allegedly only wanting to sign players with resale value and Pulis wanting to sign the Stoke team circa 2011 with Peter Crouch, Matty Etherington and Jonathan Walters being mooted as targets. Something had to give and in the end it did. Two days before the start of the season it was leaked to the press that Pulis had called a crisis meeting with Parish and that his resignation was imminent. Hope turned to despair and the meeting ended with Palace starting their second season back in the top flight in worse shape than they started their first - which, I imagine, no one thought was possible.