Thursday afternoon at his first-floor office in Soho and Steve Parish is keen to register a source of regret early in the conversation. Rewind a fortnight and, as Crystal Palace’s players were running down the clock at Stamford Bridge, Yannick Bolasie toying mercilessly with Branislav Ivanovic in front of a delirious away support, the club’s co-owner was on a yacht moored off the Adriatic coastline. The weather was stunning, the scene up on deck idyllic, but he was down below glued to a flatscreen he had frantically hooked up to his mobile.
“I knew we’d win, because I wasn’t there,” he says ruefully. “The game was on Croatian television but the only way I could get it on the box was to stream it off my phone. I probably spent the thick end of four grand on my 3G. I’m waiting for the bill now and it’ll be a ridiculous amount, but worth every penny. It was a brilliant picture, too. Perfectly clear. It was like being there. Honest.”
No one, least of all the co-chairman, is fooled but his was the consolation of seeing Palace resplendent in second place going into the September international break. Now Manchester City, untouchable to date, visit Selhurst Park for an early season collision of the division’s top two. Such occasions rarely occupy the three o’clock slots on Saturday afternoons these days. The host broadcasters may have missed a trick. Manuel Pellegrini’s team arrive on a 10-match winning streak but they will be wary. City were beaten in south London in April and are one of only three clubs – alongside Chelsea and Arsenal – to have taken more than Palace’s 40 points from 22 Premier League fixtures this calendar year.
Their hosts, even undermined by injuries, are stronger than they were in the spring courtesy of a bold approach to strengthening in the close season. Alan Pardew is settled, a manager whose aspirations are matched by those of the hierarchy. Parish and his co-owners, Martin Long, Stephen Browett and Jeremy Hosking, have grand plans for Selhurst Park, the academy and to integrate the club’s influence even more positively into the local community. “But we won’t be able to do any of it unless we stay in the Premier League,” he says, “so let’s look to that, and then beyond. Let’s push.”
Palace are seeking to belong in the elite, addressing issues which confront many who find themselves suddenly flung into lofty company. This will be a third successive season in the top flight, a feat they have managed only twice before in their 110-year history, with the desire to kick on from 11th and 10th-place finishes demonstrated in the transfer market. Yohan Cabaye’s club-record £12.5m arrival from Paris Saint-Germain set a benchmark, a move that demonstrated ambition.
“We had a team who finished third in 1991 and there’s a lesson to learn from the past,” says Parish. “Ron Noades did so much right in the way he ran this club back then, but my only criticism is he didn’t put his foot to the floor and spend that extra money when he had a chance to kick on. I’ve tried to do that. Nothing about the Cabaye deal is a bargain: we paid full whack to the club, full whack to the player. But sometimes you just have to pay to take you to another level.
“There was no question about Yohan’s pedigree, but it was also what it said about the club. The statement it made. Scott Dann was courted by other clubs this summer but, when we signed Yohan, he said to me: ‘The clubs I’m being linked with aren’t signing players of that calibre. They’re not showing that ambition. Why would I go anywhere else?’” The centre-half, like James McArthur, duly signed new terms. The hope is Bolasie – “Someone we’d love to keep for a long time” – follows suit, though Palace have had to balance purchases with painful sales. Glenn Murray, whose 31 goals had been key to promotion and who had excelled at the higher level earlier this year, departed for Bournemouth on deadline day for a guaranteed £4m with a further £1m linked to the Cherries’ future prospects.
That was a deal too good to turn down, particularly as Palace seek to comply with the Premier League’s in-house financial fair play regulations, introduced almost on the quiet in 2013 and which effectively serve as a de facto salary cap. The annual wage bill last season was £52m. “This year it will probably be somewhere in the region of £70m,” says Parish through a whisper. “There are regulations, cost control measures and targets we have to hit, and we were close with ‘issues’ in that respect. We’ve got to balance the books, so you can’t keep all the players. We can only name 25 in the Premier League and, even now, Zeki Fryers and Paddy McCarthy aren’t in it. You can’t forget the hero element when it comes to someone like Glenn, and we had the same issue with Mile Jedinak[the club captain for whom a bid of £3m from Stoke was accepted, only for the Australian to fail to agree personal terms]. It’s the hardest part of football – ruthless – but necessary because we have big plans for the stadium, the academy, the infrastructure …”
The list is lengthy and retaining Premier League status, with the new £5.14bn broadcast deal to kick in next season, will allow Palace to develop off the pitch. They are “making headway” working with KSS, the architects behind the redevelopment of Anfield and White Hart Lane, on a phased scheme to expand the capacity of Selhurst Park to 40,000. There has been positive dialogue with Croydon and Bromley councils and, while work continues on the planning stage of that project, the 91-year-old arena is enjoying a more subtle facelift. There is a new £1m Desso pitch this season. “And spending £200,000 cladding the main stand was probably the best £200,000 we’ve spent on the club in the time I’ve been here,” says Parish. “The difference that makes to how it looks when you pull up to it … You can’t expect players to think about excellence when it’s a ramshackle, corrugated iron stadium. Of course it isn’t the finished article. It’s still miles away from being something I’m proud of but I’ll settle initially for trying to make it something I’m not ashamed of. It’s approaching that now.”
Then there is the academy. Palace’s youth setup has been integral over recent years, a conveyor belt which thrust players such as Victor Moses, Nathaniel Clyne and Wilfried Zaha into the first team. Clyne, now with Liverpool, played both of England’s Euro 2016 qualifiers in the recent international window. Zaha’s £15m sale to Manchester United in 2013, and subsequent loan back before a permanent return last summer, was critical in ensuring the club were promoted to the top flight virtually debt free.
Yet an extensive revamp of the Beckenham training complex has forced the Category Two academy on to a rented site across the road. Finding a permanent new base is proving time-consuming and problematic with local sites big enough at a premium – they will inspect another prospective venue next week – with Parish clearly dismayed at what he harshly considers to be “a black mark” against his name.
The academy setup is not merely a means of progressing youngsters into the senior side. The club, he insists, has a duty of care to the local community, and a social responsibility across south London to make more of a positive impact on youngsters’ lives. “We’re talking about 170 boys doing good things with their life, physical exercise, an education,” he says. “Yes, we get the odd player out of it, but I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about our study centre and foundation, and how we reach out and genuinely make ourselves part of the community rather than all that corporate social responsibility guff just to tick a box.
“Our foundation do great work, people giving their time for free, but we haven’t supported them well enough. I’m not criticising past owners: we’ve never had the money to do it in the past, so now we have to make it a priority. The players have just agreed a proportion of their bonus scheme will go to the foundation. A couple have also given a bit of their loyalty monies to the foundation. We really want to make a difference, but I want to understand what that means. I don’t just want to do stuff because it looks good on a flier or a press release. We have an event about combating knife crime, and everyone says that’s great, but does it really stop anyone carrying a knife? I want us to use the name of the football club to do practical things that can actually help people. And charity begins at home, so we have to look after our own: those boys who come through our academy but don’t make it.”
To that end the co-chairman has asked Ed Warner, the chairman of UK Athletics, to compile a report on how better Palace can make a social difference across south London, and Mark Bright has been appointed to a new role – title pending – similar to that held by Eddie Newton at Chelsea, overseeing the development squad, monitoring the progress of those out on loan, and looking at what safety nets exist for those released. “It’s not good enough just to show these kids the door,” Parish says. “Some of these boys are in foster care, or don’t have the support systems or even social skills to fall back on. They have only ever expressed themselves on a football pitch, so we’re even talking to Debrett’s about a possible course. If we’re in the Premier League I can solve all these problems, diverting money to help different aspects of the club. But you can’t do it all at once. We have to eat the elephant a bit at a time.”
Attracting further investment, as had been mooted when the American businessman Josh Harris expressed an interest last season, may speed up the process. “I’m going to need £80m for the things I want to do to the stadium, maybe £30m for the academy,” adds Parish. “I’m pretty confident we can stay in the division and do things incrementally. Maybe, over 10 or 15 years, I can achieve that. But I’m a bit more impatient than I was when I was 20 and, as a football club, you have to keep the upward momentum. But it has to be the right investment with the right governance. These are shark-infested waters, and I won’t be left in a situation where I can’t make the decisions.
“Some of the conversations I’ve had with ‘interested parties’ have literally lasted 20 minutes. I’ve had people sit there saying they would bring in x, y and z to run the football club, but if these ‘mystery investors’ take over, I go back to being a fan in the stands. I’ve watched this football club pretty much be a laughing stock for my entire adult life, apart from one or two glimpses. Currently, we’re not. All of a sudden kids aren’t mumbling into their collars, almost ashamed: ‘I support Crystal Palace.’ Nowadays there’s a bit of respect for us. We beat Chelsea away, Liverpool away, Manchester City at home.
“We’ve all put in too much hard work just to give it to somebody in the hope they can pull it off. So they’ve either got to have such deep pockets they can afford to get it wrong, or they’ve got to be incredibly competent, or they’ve got to be willing to be a partner in the process, just like my three partners now. There is plenty we still have to achieve here. And while it’s not low-hanging fruit, it’s not out of reach either. It’s all do-able.
“Some of it might need a bit of financing. I’m happy to put money in, as the other boys are. But we’re talking big money. We will do something, but only with the right people. It’s about the club improving. We know we’ve got a chance.”
