Kiely to join Palace

The way Deano left always felt wrong. He's left out that he had been going through a period of pretty poor form when Curbs dropped him and that Myhre did very well when called upon, but it wasn't befitting of a man who had done so much to establish us as a Premier League team.

It's interesting what he said about us trying to move onto the next level being what did for us. I'm not sure I buy it to be honest. We had to try and improve, and we couldn't continue to exist on the underdog status that got us to where we were because that status is a narrative that others create around you more than something you can control. I think the real cock-up was us thinking that Francis Jeffers could take us up a level. Rommedahl should have, he was just an absolute tulip, and Murphy did help us progress for as long as his head fitted through the door. The real killer for us was Curbs knew that the team needed a full shake-up that he didn't think he could do at the same club anymore, and we brought in the wrong manager who spent too much on the wrong signings, then compounded the manager error again and then once more for good measure. To think that we brought in Traore, Faye, what was left of Hasselbaink (a lot, and yet so little), Reid and Diawara as our whole summer window for just shy of £11m plus wages (when that was a lot, and twice what we paid the previous summer) and in that lot only brought in one player who was any good is slightly soul-destroying.