As Crystal Palace fans made their way to the biggest match in the club's history, the 1990 FA Cup final against Manchester United, one player above all others had his name sung along Wembley Way.
"Super Alan Pardew" had scored the winner of an impossibly thrilling 4-3 semifinal against Liverpool. Back then, he was a hard-working, unspectacular midfielder. Only the blond highlights in his hair suggested the big time. His job was to win the ball and feed the team's star strikers, Ian Wright and Mark Bright.
This season saw Pardew, as manager of Newcastle United, visit Selhurst Park in a September League Cup tie and regaled with that same chorus. The late 1980s and early-1990s were a golden period in the club's history that fans often hark back to. Three months on from that friendly reunion, the Eagles' owners have tempted Pardew away from managing Newcastle to be their latest saviour.
Though he hails from Wimbledon and not Croydon -- and supported Fulham as a boy -- a return to Selhurst might allow Pardew the chance to become the local hero he could never be in Newcastle.
For the second-longest serving manager in the Premier League, after four years on Tyneside, to desert a club in resolute mid-table for a club in 18th place with 16 points is a gamble, but Pardew's relationship with the Toon Army has been distant at best, vicious at worst.
Unlike fellow Londoners Chris Hughton, manager from the summer of 2009 to December 2010, and Glenn Roeder, a 1980s captain who managed the club in the 2006-7 season, fans never took Pardew to their hearts. In turn, he has always been operating hundreds of miles from his heartland. His family home has remained in Surrey. After losing Tony Pulis on the eve of the season and an unhappy return to the club for Neil Warnock, Palace have paid two million pounds compensation to lure Pardew, a considerable inflation on the one million bonus that Pulis received for keeping the Eagles in the top flight last season. The objective remains resolutely the same; Pardew takes over a team who have to survive.
What might follow his tenure at Newcastle is the greater and far more complicated question. Pardew, famously awarded an eight-year contract by owner Mike Ashley in September 2012, always looked determined to cling on at St James', no matter how many times he appeared to be on the brink. Ashley, in turn, has stuck by the fellow southerner he brought to the club to replace the popular Hughton in December 2010.
There was a brief period during the 2011-12 season when the Toon Army nicknamed their manager "Pardiola" but an abrasive personality, a limited, pragmatic footballing outlook and a propensity to reach for excuses that defied their credulity has often irked them. The season in the sun that took Newcastle to fifth, and won Pardew a Manager of the Year award was followed by a 2012-13 relegation battle, while last season's promising beginnings were followed by a pitiful form beyond January.
Owner Mike Ashley will always be number one pariah, but Pardew often made himself just as unpopular through his team's inconsistency, and by repeatedly backing his paymaster in public.
In September, as Pardew's team lost at Stoke -- having gained just three points from six matches -- it looked as if the end had finally arrived. Yet the ever-inscrutable Ashley, at the Britannia that evening, did not panic. Newcastle entered December challenging for European qualification, but after suffering a fourth successive derby defeat to Sunderland last weekend, Pardew's popularity on Tyneside dive-bombed once more.
Most Newcastle fans would only lament Pardew if his replacement turns out to be a lesser achiever. Aside from Hughton, the rest of Ashley's choices of manager have been disastrous since he bought the club in 2007.
Ashley's increasing involvement with the drama at Rangers in Scotland brings into question the future of his own association with Newcastle. Taking over distressed businesses and reviving them has made him a billionaire. The fallen Glasgow giants, with Champions League football far more of a possibility even considering a current lowly status, might one day offer a far better means by which to market his Sports Direct empire.
That uncertainty might lead Pardew's reasons for jumping ship though Ashley has rarely made his working life easy, with examples including bringing Joe Kinnear back to the club as director of football and selling stars like Yohan Cabaye to not release funds for a replacement. That said, the pair tolerated each other and have parted on friendly terms.
After a 3-1 defeat at Manchester United on Boxing Day, Pardew made a public plea for transfer backing but Ashley has little interest in spending the funds necessary to take Newcastle into continental competitions, since Pardew is a good enough manager to make sure that safety will always be likely. At Palace, the objective is the simplicity of survival, as opposed to the purgatory of managing towards mid-table mediocrity.
Once that is achieved, Pardew might perhaps follow his playing legacy by becoming the figurehead of his club's attempt to regenerate and become an established Premier League club. Pardew has never hid his ambition, and, by contrast to Ashley, Palace's co-owners are prepared to put money up in the January transfer window.
"My romantic vision is to aim a bit higher than that," said the new Eagles boss when asked in August if he might fancy a Selhurst return. "I am not being disrespectful to Palace as it is still a club which is close to my heart."
Such ardour eventually pushed him back towards the club where he made his name in football. At Palace, Pardew has the chance to be loved by fans in a fashion that was never made possible on Tyneside.