After their first win of 2013, Ian Holloway’s Crystal Palace side are currently sitting pretty in third place in the Championship table. Their dominant 3-1 victory against strugglers Wolves underlined the transformation this Palace side has undergone since their relegation survival last season.
Following The Eagles flying first half of the season, much of the talk has been about young wingers Wilfried Zaha and Yannick Bolasie. Undoubtedly these two individuals have been on remarkable form so far this term, however, it seems, as is often the case with Palace, that the young, talented individuals are the ones who reap the praise when the Londoners are on song.
How is it then, that a man who has found the net more times (in the league) than any other forward in the top three tiers of English football since September, is largely being ignored? For when was the last time a Palace centre forward had already scored twenty league goals by January?
Glenn Murray currently has 22 league goals this term, just one behind the leading league goal scorer in England, which is Tom Pope of Port Vale with 23. By way of comparison, fellow Championship striker Charlie Austin, of Burnley, currently has 19 league goals, whilst the top scorer in the Premier League is Man United goal machine Robin Van Persie with 16. Worth noting also, is that Andrew Johnson, back in the 2003-4 season when Crystal Palace were last promoted into the Premier League, scored 28 league goals in total.
Whilst Johnson is widely regarded by Palace fans as a club legend, why then is Glenn Murray being overshadowed by his younger team mates? Derby County manager Nigel Clough was also puzzled by this, after his side we beaten 3-0 at Selhurst Park earlier on in the season, with Murray bagging two of the goals.
After the game, Clough stated, “But after all the talk of the wide men all week and their threat, he was the difference – the centre forward Murray. He was the one that caused us all the problems.”
Derby centre-back Jake Buxton was another who heaped praise on Murray at the expense of Zaha and co.
“All of the talk had been about Palace’s wingers but Murray is probably the best we’ve come up against.” He added, “He (Zaha) is not for me. Gareth Roberts kept him in his pocket all game, I thought. He has got flair and trickery but the end product? I didn’t see any end product. At the end of the day, I thought Glenn Murray was the difference between us and them.”