Relegation a strong possibility unless there is change

There seems to be a frustrating lethargy that has manifested itself in recent weeks, especially in midweek games.

For a while now we’ve been poor under our own lights and it is fast becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy with both players and fans losing all belief in the club.

This is leading to an eerie, nervous and bad tempered atmosphere which, lets face it, doesn’t help anyone.

Stories of angry exchanges between players and fans on Tuesday night in particular are a tell-tale sign of unrest.

It’s even more baffling when it turned out it was two of our most committed and longest serving players, Shaun Derry and Danny Butterfield, who reacted to a small minority of the crowd who had targeted them for abuse.

Last time round in 1999, we had nowhere near the same quality in the side as we do now but Selhurst was always rocking, the fans backed the team unequivocally, never lost belief and that was a major factor in the survival of Crystal Palace Football Club.

But now the whole club seems to have lost its spark.

Where’s the atmosphere that made the Wolves, Peterborough and Aston Villa games such special occasions?

We’re in administration, slipping quietly into League One with crowds of 12,000 and worst of all the siege mentality has disappeared.

It’s a two-way street though and the players need to stop feeling sorry for themselves and show why they were up challenging the play-off places rather than using the 10-point deduction as an excuse for a bad performance.

How many times in the last few weeks have you heard either the manager or a player come out after the game and say: “We’re disappointed with the result but we would have been up near the play-offs if we hadn’t had gone into administration.”

Go out there and show why that was the case.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that a mere few weeks ago this side was stepping over the white line without an ounce of fear.

We were a difficult team to play against and were always confident of getting a result.

Admittedly, we’ve lost the charismatic manager who instigated the whole ethos of the side but let's not forget that apart from Victor Moses this is the same team who had performed so well until the last a couple of weeks.

This is where the managerial team have such a big part to play if the club is going to wake up and fight for a place in this division.

We need Paul Hart to draw a line under the negatives and start afresh to get the players concentrating on the task in hand rather than the injustices of this season.

A change of formation would help him stamp his mark on the team - continuing with Warnock’s tactics is not helping him or the players.

They were designed to work for Warnock for his style of management and without him they just serve to remind the players of yet another negative this season.

Historically, Hart has preferred a 4-4-2 so why not try that, get some width and change the impetus of our attack with Sean Scannell injecting the pace to compliment Alan Lee’s presence.

Only by putting his fingerprint on the side can the club look forward again.

If he is able to I think the players will be able to go into the remaining games with a more positive outlook and the crowd would soon follow suit.