140: Chris Armstrong, Crystal Palace, Merlin’s Premier League 95 Sticker Collection

It’s FA Cup final day and Crystal Palace take on Manchester City at Wembley in what should be the showpiece finale to the English football season. As the Zenith Data Systems Cup apparently doesn’t count as a major trophy this presents the Eagles with a chance to win the first piece of significant silverware in their history while City will be competing in their third consecutive FA Cup final aiming to win the world’s oldest cup competition for the ninth time. At the time of writing Palace are in their now traditional twelfth position in the Premier League while City are contemplating a devastating campaign battling for a Champions League spot having surrendered their league title to Liverpool. All neutrals are obviously deeply concerned for their plight and have definitely not been basking in their misery.

There are a number of reasons why I want Palace to win today. 36 years of following the Eagles is clearly the most important of these and I am so happy that we’ve taken the cup competitions seriously this season. Had we not produced a performance for the ages against Aston Villa in the semi-finals, however, I would be wanting to see the Villans lift the trophy. Football is meant to be entertaining and competitive and City’s relentlessness in the last decade or so has been pretty insufferable. This isn’t helped by the obsequious nature with which their success has been met alongside an ignorance that the backing of Abu Dhabi’s money might have done them a few favours. To top this off, having secured their place in today’s final, manager Pep Guardiola was quick to dismiss the significance of their victory over Nottingham Forest stating “The damage [to their season] would be minimum. It's not going to confuse [that] the season has been good… We are a thousand million points behind Liverpool. I said many times the season hasn't been good because we define if the season is good or not with the Premier League.” 

It must be a nice luxury to be able to define a “good” season by whether or not you won the Premier League and one that shows how quickly some can forget a club’s history. Thirty years ago Manchester City finished seventeenth in the English top flight and suffered fifth round exits in both domestic cup competitions. The following year they suffered relegation to Division One having very deliberately played out a draw with Liverpool on the final day of the season blissfully unaware of Coventry City and Southampton securing draws and surviving by virtue of their superior goal difference. Things weren’t too much better for Palace who made an instant return to the second tier having fallen victim to the restructuring of the Premier League and, more importantly, not being very good. A paltry 34 goals across 44 games was unhelpful but the Eagles were a different beast in the cup competitions where 27 goals in just fifteen took them to the semi-finals of both the FA and League Cups. Ten of those goals came courtesy of Chris Armstrong.

The striker had crossed South London from Millwall at the start of the inaugural Premier League season and more than held his own in the top flight even if Palace failed to do so. His goals were instrumental in the Eagles’ First Division title success and he got straight back to goalscoring in their first game of the 1994/95 season. Unfortunately Liverpool scored six at Selhurst Park and it wouldn’t be until October when Palace would secure their first league win, against Arsenal, while Armstrong didn’t register another league goal until November. Relief came in the Coca-Cola Cup where Palace swept aside Lincoln City, Wimbledon, holders Aston Villa and Man City with Armstrong scoring five goals. He enjoyed similar success in the FA Cup scoring in wins over Lincoln, Nottingham Forest and Wolverhampton Wanderers. The win at Molineux was all the sweeter owing to the quality of all four Palace goals including one of Armstrong’s efforts lodging in the stanchion. Around this time the striker was served with a four-match ban for testing positive for cannabis despite many criticising the likelihood of Armstrong gaining any performance enhancement. Palace being Palace they were beaten in both domestic semi-finals by Liverpool and Manchester United respectively and managed just one win in their last four league games despite Armstrong netting in the final three.

Tottenham Hotspur were quick to swoop for Chris Armstrong following Palace’s relegation and paid a then club record £4.5m to bring him to White Hart Lane. The Spurs’ faithful were not overly enamoured at first having said goodbye to Jurgen Klinsmann and the press were quick to make comparisons to the signing of Dennis Bergkamp at Arsenal. Nevertheless he formed a strong partnership with Teddy Sheringham and scored 22 goals in all competitions including a winner in the North London derby in the first of his seven seasons with the club. He finished his career with first club Wrexham in 2005 but re-emerged in the press in 2016 after being arrested for drug possession and again in 2021 after an incident in a West London Tesco landed him a community order and court mandated treatment for addiction issues.

In many ways Chris Armstrong’s career serves as a metaphor for Palace’s travails over the years with flashes of brilliance up and down the top two tiers of England’s football pyramid without ever gaining the major honours that seem to fall into the laps of the big clubs. In the middle of the aforementioned 1994/95 campaign, where Palace came so close to domestic cup glory, Kevin Keegan looked to add the Newcastle native to his attacking riches at St James’s Park. The deal fell through and the following year Keegan’s entertainers fell just short of Premier League immortality. To paraphrase the former Magpies’ manager, and for Chris Armstrong and all the Palace heroes over the years, I will love it if we beat City, love it”. EEEEEEEAAAAAAGGLLLLESSSSS!