It's time for a change in the Palace goal against Reading in the FA Cup on Friday night. It's time for Julian Speroni.
The cult hero goalkeeper has been waiting in the wings for a chance between the sticks all season after being unceremoniously dropped by manager Alan Pardew after picking up an injury... and is yet to return.
Speroni was first choice when Pardew was appointed manager in January and kept his place until the end of the season. During that time he pulled off countless wonder saves and built up a formidable relationship with the defenders in front of him as Palace rose to secure a 10th place finish, their best ever placing in a Premier League season.
But come the start of the 2015-16 season the Argentine was nowhere to be seen. Alex McCarthy, a £3 million new signing from QPR, was installed as first-choice keeper and perennial backup Wayne Hennessey kept his place as understudy. McCarthy did OK but after a few mistakes was replaced by Hennessey. The Welshman also did OK but after a few mistakes was dropped for last week's 2-1 defeat to Liverpool. Would Speroni finally get his chance back in the team? Nope, McCarthy was reinstalled and, you guessed it, suffered another mistake -- slipping and kicking the ball straight to Roberto Firmino who scored the equaliser.
Rarely before has a team seen so many game-changing mistakes from their goalkeepers, which begs the question: Why hasn't a man who has proved himself at this level to be competent and fairly mistake free not been given his chance?
It seems the answer is quite simply because Pardew doesn't rate him. He thinks Speroni is too small for a goalkeeper -- even at six foot tall -- and, at 36, is too old. He wants the Palace team to move on, but with so many blunders this season from his other two keepers it is time for Pardew to swallow his pride and pick Speroni again.
The team need to find confidence in each other and Speroni will bring that. McCarthy and Hennessey are competent keepers, no doubt, but with the team on a horrible 12-game winless run in the league they need to revert back to type, to reset the system to a time when everything worked and that was with Speroni in goal. The Liverpool match, in hindsight, was a horrid game for McCarthy to be thrown back into; a pressure-filled environment for a young keeper who hasn't played that many top flight games. It needed someone with experience and calmness; it needed Speroni.
Palace's FA Cup quarterfinal against Reading on Friday night is their first (and best) chance to reach the semifinals for the first time since 1995 -- when they lost 2-0 to Manchester United in a replay. It is also almost 26 years to the day that they beat Cambridge in the 1990 quarterfinal, a year they went on to make the final at Wembley -- and also lost to United.
And it's the perfect chance for Pardew to hand the gloves back to Speroni to show what he can do. The Palace fans are desperate to see the man they voted Player of the Year a record four times in a row back between the sticks, chanting for the Argentinean at the final whistle of the Eagles' defeat to Liverpool.
The game itself will be far from easy. Reading aren't on a fantastic run in the league but seem to raise their game for the cup, especially against most illustrious opposition. And while Palace seem to thrive as the underdogs, being the favourites for once might unsettle them. It certainly seems to have done so in the league, with recent defeats to Bournemouth, Watford and Aston Villa.
A win at the Royals will go somewhere to soothing the pain of Palace's terrible league run which has seen them slip from fifth to 15th in the table since the turn of the year, but picking Speroni will also do Pardew a favour. He's managed to avoid whispers around his job despite the team's form and that might be something to do with the success in the cup so far.
Picking Speroni, much like Louis van Gaal picking academy products for Manchester United, will give Pardew almost a free pass. It would be the same if he picked talented Eagles prospects like Hiram Boateng.
Fans find it harder to criticise a manager when he is delivering what they want and what Palace fans mostly want right now is to see their team turn around this hour winless run in the league and make the FA Cup semifinal. Both are more than possible, but it will start with Speroni back between the sticks.