ONE of the best things about being a Crystal Palace fan is there always seems to be something exciting going on at Selhurst Park.

Whether it be a fight for promotion to the Premiership, or a hard-fought battle against the drop from the top tier, or, more recently, from the Championship, there is rarely mid-table mediocrity for the Eagles.

As the club has seen its fortunes change so dramatically in recent years, and as it has new owners, a new manager, plans for a new stadium and optimism from a surprisingly good start to the current season, now is a good time to update the history books.

This is where Ian King comes in, as the lifelong Palace fan has produced this book, which certainly lives up to its name.

It is packed with a wealth of information, history and facts and figures to provide younger fans with a history lesson and bring memories flooding back to the older Palace faithful.

The book starts with the club's history, from its formation in 1905 through the war years up and up to the end of the 2010/11 season via the Malcolm Allison, Terry Venables, Steve Coppell and Neil Warnock eras.

Also included is a section of memorable matches which played a big part in the club's future, featuring thrilling cup ties, playoff finals and crunch relegation matches.

Selected Palace legends are rewarded with brief biographies, as are the club's many managers.

But the real selling point of this book is the incredible amount of information provided about every league and cup match the club has taken part in.

Each season is given a double-page chart showing exactly who played, who scored, which substitutes were used in what order and even what shirt numbers the players wore - up until squad numbers were introduced in the mid-1990s.

It's quite a feat to have collected all this information and presented it so well, especially when considering how the number of substitutes and how squads in general have grown over the years, allowing fans to flick back at seasons gone by and remind themselves of all of the Palace matches they had seen.

As if this wasn't enough, after a chapter on numerous club records, there is a directory listing every player ever to have pulled on the red and blue (or claret and blue) shirt and their games played and goals totals.

This section really covers every player, from Ambrose and Armstrong to Zaha and Zohar.

However, there are some drawbacks with the book.

If I'm being really picky, I would have liked to have seen the squad numbers used in the season-by-season guide.

I acknowledge this would have made it harder to work out the formation used, but I think it would have been worth doing.

Also, sadly for Mr King, he appears to have been let down in the production stages of the book.

The end of the club history section does feature a number of mistakes, including a whole chunk which has been printed twice.

There is also a formatting issue with one of the pages and, unfortunately, a few spelling mistakes both in the club history and player biographies sections, which is a shame.

Perhaps the proof reader should have been shown the red card.

It is clear Mr King really has done his homework with this book, which, despite its production faults, will still be of interest to a large number of Palace fans, hence this four-star review.

But despite gathering all the information, a few simple mistakes run the risk of spoiling an otherwise very impressive effort.

Crystal Palace: The Complete Record by Ian King. Published by DB Publishing £25.

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