Crystal Palace future is crystal clear for club’s saviours

Julian Bennetts11 April 2012

On 2 May, Crystal Palace's car crash of a season ended on a rare positive note as their 2-2 draw at Sheffield Wednesday ensured another season in the Championship.

One month later Steve Parish, the man who heads the consortium that has effectively saved the financially-stricken club, was involved in a wreck of his own, crashing heavily while indulging his other passion — motor-racing.

And while Parish's collarbone has not yet healed after he lost control of his Porsche 911 at Oulton Park in Cheshire, the feeling is that Palace are finally on the mend.

Administration, a 10-point penalty and the threat of relegation hung heavily over Selhurst Park last season but the arrival of CPFC 2010, Parish's consortium, ensures the future promises to be brighter than the recent past.

Make no mistake, without Parish and his three fellow CPFC 2010 members, Crystal Palace would no longer exist. All wealthy individuals in their own right, the quartet have put their own money into the club and are bankrolling all spending.

Parish is the frontman. He has made his money from his marketing company, Tag:Worldwide, and is co-chairman along with Martin Long, who set up Churchill Insurance before selling it to the Royal Bank of Scotland for more than £1.1billion in 2003.

These two lifelong Palace fans have been joined by Stephen Browett, chairman of Farr Vintners, a fine wine merchants, and Jeremy Hosking, a hedge fund manager who was valued at £175m in this year's Sunday Times Rich List.

Yet despite their personal wealth, 45-year-old Parish is adamant Palace will not chase the dream and believes that sustained, sensible growth is the only option.

"We are here because we want to give Crystal Palace a better future, and the way to do that is by being financially prudent," says Parish, whose side take their first steps under the new owners and a new manager, George Burley, when they face Leicester City at home on Saturday.

"Nobody is being delusional about where we are as a club, and we are living in a time when, in football, boom and bust is a way of life.

"Look at what happened at Charlton or Leeds — they both fell down the divisions. We won't overspend and put the club at risk."

After the dire warnings from Brendan Guilfoyle, the administrator who oversaw the chaotic end to last season, those words will be hugely comforting to Palace fans.

The trauma began when the hedge fund Agilo put the club into administration in January in order to reclaim debts of £5.5m. The resulting 10-point penalty led to the departure of manager Neil Warnock to Queens Park Rangers, but it was also the time when CPFC 2010 really began to take shape.

But as Parish is honest enough to admit, if he wasn't a fan he would not have gone near the club.
"The administrator was telling us he'd had 30 interested parties and was confident of doing a deal and getting everyone the money they were owed," he explains.

"We said that we didn't really want to buy the club but that we wouldn't let it go out of business. Eventually all the other buyers melted away, so here we are."

Matters came to a head shortly after that dramatic draw at Hillsborough as Parish's consortium set about meeting the 1 June deadline imposed by Guilfoyle to resolve the future of the club, which had debts of £30m.

Fans protested outside the headquarters of Lloyds Bank, but while they were sweating on the club's future, Parish was the calmest man around.

"We were the only buyers left, and the deal was either done with us or the club went under," he says."You are basically challenging the people on the other side of the table to send it under.

"We were saying to them: You are going to be responsible for this football club disappearing, not us'.

"That's a pretty strong bargaining position. Fortunately, the right people worked that out, so Palace live on."

And there is a renewed sense of optimism at the club. Burley will be given money to spend after the CVA (company voluntary agreement) was passed, and Parish is looking into the possibility of moving away from their Selhurst Park home.

"We aren't here to make the numbers up," he says. "In George Burley we have appointed an excellent manager, and we intend to trade as a profit.

"We are looking at other sites in the local area before deciding if we want to redevelop Selhurst Park or not, and we intend to use our Academy fully.

"We want to invest in the squad, and in such an open division there is no reason why we can't be pushing for the top six this season. Maybe some of the fans think we were only here to do a salvation job and not go for it, but that isn't the case at all.

"We intend to put the fans at the heart of everything we do, and we are aware that we aren't necessarily the owners of Crystal Palace. We are simply looking after it for a while, and while we are here we intend to do our very best."

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