Five Year Plan

We're a fickle bunch aren't we? I don't just mean Palace fans but football fans in general. The speed at which we allow players and managers to fall in and out of favour must leave some of them wondering if there's ever anything they can do right.

Dougie Freedman only had to walk on the pitch to be treated to a hero's welcome - even though he then wouldn't touch the ball for 90 minutes. In comparison, Shefki Kuqi could run his proverbial nuts off for a whole game but only to get torrents of abuse from home supporters as a result.

That changed, temporarily, yesterday when he wrapped up a lucky 2-0 win at Forest with a delicious lob of home keeper Paul Smith with nine minutes remaining. Wait a minute...Kuqi...delicious lob? Kuqi...goal? The big Finnish international capped an impressive half hour with a superb finish that had seen him chase a totally lost cause.

He was second best to the punt forward from midfield but after putting Smith under pressure, the keeper realised he was in no-man's land and retreated. This still left Kuqi with some considerable work to do, but he calmly took a touch, looked up and floated a 25-yard chip over the stranded keeper's head and into the net.

Cue relief (at securing the points), confusion and (in some areas) laughter at what the Palace fans had just witnessed. Still, Kuqi lapped it up for all it was worth. And why not? Had Freedman scored that goal, it would ony have increaed his hero status further. But it was no less than the big man deserved because for the 30 minutes or so that he was on the pitch he chased, harried and made a general nuisance of himself.

He won countless headers and visably shook up the Forest defence A fan walking out of the City Ground summed up the day when he, drunkenly, shouted "Kuqi, Kuqi. We used to hate you but now we love you. Kuqi!" No doubt if he fails to reproduce that sort of display in his next game, parity will be restored.