If you support a struggling football team, you often need to be able to laugh at yourself just to make it bearable.
In fact, that’s true for fans of most teams. Things are never going to be rosy all the time, so a sense of humour is required to deal with those low moments; of course, some supporters are better at this than others.
Crystal Palace fans - to put it mildly - haven’t had much to cheer about this season, with new manager Frank de Boer sacked after just four league games and the team still yet to register a goal or a point in the Premier League.
They have had a little more luck in the EFL Cup, beating Huddersfield Town 1-0, but Bakary Sako’s header in that game was their only goal in September.
In such circumstances, most wouldn’t bother with a goal of the month award. You know, what with there being just one goal.
But Crystal Palace fanzine Five Year Plan aren’t like most fans.
In a normal month, they’d put together a shortlist of four goals, and give fans a chance to vote on the winner.
You might have expected them to throw in reserve and youth team goals to make up the numbers. Instead, they created this piece of magnificence.
“We’ve always favoured gallows humour at FYP as a way of dealing with being a Palace fans and this video is just another example of that,” Five Year Plan’s Jim Daly tells ShortList.
“You have to have a sense of humour to support Palace, otherwise you’d probably collapse under the stress of it. Why do you think there are so many famous comedians who are Eagles?”
Carl Mortimer, the man in charge of social content for FYP, put together the video on the recommendation of Daly, who also produced a unique match rating system following the 4-0 defeat to Manchester United.
And it’s clear plenty of supporters also saw the funny side, with the replies to the video sharing the same gallows humour.
Palace have four fixtures in October: a cup trip to Bristol City and Premier League meetings with Chelsea, Newcastle United and West Ham United.
Daly and the rest of the Five Year Plan team will hope Roy Hodgson’s team can give them more to cheer about this month, though he’s not getting too ambitious just yet.
“Something tells me we’re going to have more opportunities to do similar in the next few weeks…”
(Images: Rex Features)
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