Our managerial search is finally over - Neil Warnock is officially the new Crystal Palace boss.

The football world will no doubt be scoffing at this appointment, and the Palace fans will certainly be split on the decision.

It may be an unpopular view but I for one am delighted with this appointment.

The easy opinion is to say Warnock is an out of date dinosaur who plays direct football.

I can assure you the same people who are saying that were saying the exact same thing the day Tony Pulis was appointed.

We needed a strong character to come in and Neil Warnock is a leader - a boss.

It is widely forgotten it was under Warnock’s reign our team was as fierce and as strong as it has been since the turn of the millennium, with the exception perhaps of the current squad.

The way Warnock sets up his team is very similar to the way Pulis does and this sense of continuity is vital in order for the club to move forward.

We are going to be a physical in-your-face side which no team will want to play against, particularly at Selhurst Park.

It’s no secret Warnock loves this club and that’s another huge factor.

Some Palace fans could still be bitter about how he departed us during administration, although I believe Warnock was always the victim of circumstances.

If it wasn’t for him, we may well have been liquidated because he helped the club scrimp as much money as possible when he rejected pathetic bids for stars such as Victor Moses, eventually getting a much higher fee for him.

The manner of how Warnock departed also allowed the club to be compensated, which in turn helped us keep our head above the water.

He is a huge character and for this reason alone will always be a scapegoat in the media.

Perhaps the most important thing is we can now finally crack on in the transfer window.

Warnock now has a big transfer kitty to work with and time is ticking away with the window closing in just five days.

We need five or six new additions and can only hope our new manager has already got an adequate list of targets.

We desperately need strength in depth and that was made alarmingly obvious during Saturday’s dire defeat to West Ham.

With our strongest XI, I believe we have enough quality to survive in this league.

It’s when players are missing from the XI the real issue arises.

Saturday saw us without Scott Dann, Joe Ledley and Jason Puncheon - and that really cost us the points against West Ham.

Excluding Warnock, Malky Mackay was about the only person spoken of I’d have wanted at this club prior to the leaked news of his appalling behaviour while still at Cardiff City.

It would have been unimaginably disastrous if Palace were to have been dragged into this scandal with Mackay and Iain Moody.

While we were being branded as the Crystal Palace circus in the press, I am delighted that our name was not tainted by this scandal.

It was nothing to do with the club and I have bizarrely found myself thanking Vincent Tan for making us pull the plug on the Mackay deal by leaking it all to the press.

Fortunately the season is still young and we have great foundations to survive in this league.

We certainly can look forward to watching a Palace side that will not keel over and one who will fight for each other and for the fans.

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