By Palace fan and online columnist for the Croydon Advertiser, Alisdair Kemp.Selhurst atmosphere spurs team on to victory – long may it continue with fans' patience.
Saturday's potentially season-defining win over Aston Villa showcased Selhurst Park at its absolute finest.
With a capacity crowd for one of the Premier League's lesser teams dispelling any aspersions about fairweather fans in South London, Crystal Palace finally felt like a top-tier club.
The improved match-winning second half performance was inspired, in no small part, by the supreme atmosphere generated inside what is becoming one of the most feared Premier League grounds to visit.
What made the tumultuous support all the more striking was the fact that, in all honesty, the match was appalling.
It lacked any sort of rhythm – lacking equally the usual excuse of a series of fouls disrupting the flow – and both teams failed to demonstrate the necessary quality in possession to generate an end-to-end affair.
Nevertheless, none of this mattered in the second half as the crowd appeared to sense the need to spur the team to another crucial victory with a cauldron-like atmosphere.
How many other Premier League crowds would rise to the occasion so magnificently: reeling out song after song so vociferously when faced with such turgid football?
The praise lavished on the Palace support has at times seemed excessive and a little uncomfortable, as the noise is just par for the course at Selhurst these days.
However, having now spent a season visiting a series of Premier League libraries, the raving in the media about the Selhurst atmosphere is easy to understand.
In a league where it has become customary for fans to turn up expectantly, waiting to be entertained and prompted to sing by free-flowing football, fans that bellow club anthems from the terraces come rain or shine are a welcome break.
The improvement in skill, determination and desire in the second half from Palace surely resulted from the improvement in atmosphere.
Perhaps having briefly drifted into the doldrums of top-tier tranquillity after a season exposed to quiet and artificial away days, the Palace faithful did what it does best and dragged the team up to the dizzy heights of 12th with a cacophony of sound.
Long may the carnival atmosphere continue, for as thrilling as it was to hear "Tony Pulis' red and blue army" deservedly sung for the first time against Aston Villa, the true test lies in trying to maintain the vociferous support into next season and beyond, when fans – as their Stoke City counterparts eventually did – may grow weary of the perceived negative tactics.
For my part I find the strategic approach to games under Pulis intriguing and exciting in equal measure.
Football does not need to be "tiki-taka" to be revered; counter-attacking football is at this stage both pragmatic and enthralling.
One can but hope that the Selhurst crowd learns from the mistakes of the Stoke fans and Board: now lumbered with more mid-table mediocrity in most likely more expensive packaging under Mark Hughes.
