The Assassination Bureau

Death becomes them. We can see the headlines now: ‘Sick fanzine advocates murder of innocent men!’ Innocent? Pah! This weekend Steve Bruce, one of many to have wronged the Palace, returns to Selhurst Park… some of us would like to see him endure a fitting end…

Go on admit it. You really shouldn’t because it’s not very nice and football is only a game after all, but have you ever had a secret fantasy where certain people have received a richly deserved comeuppance for crimes against Crystal Palace FC?

Ladies and gentlemen, we are a secret (well not quite so secret, now that we’ve told you) organisation dedicated to the elimination of enemies of CPFC. We are Crepe (the Committee for Revenge and the Elimination of Palace Enemies), also known as the Selhurst assassination bureau, and it is our job to avenge wrongdoing against our club and to impose the ultimate penalty for failure. We would like to share with you our secret list of targets. What do you mean, you already know who’s on it?

As you will see below, it is not our intention to merely gun down miscreants in the street. No, that would be positively vulgar. Our highly trained agents are in fact waiting to help the enemies of Crystal Palace make their exit in a more, shall we say, appropriate fashion.

We start our campaign of vengeance with none other than Mark Goldberg – the man who believed that everything he touched would turn to gold. And now it will, for just like Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger, he will die of asphyxiation from being covered in gold paint. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaahhhh, forgive us a cruel chuckle. Now we’re in the swing of things we must also send a message to inform you that Michele Padovano sleeps with the fishes.

Remember our chubby goalkeeper of that era, the one who let us down when others stood firm – some fans may throw pies at him, but we prefer to feed the bloater and keep feeding him until, like Mr Creosote in Life of Brian he simply explodes, so… ‘just one more wafer thin mint, Mr Kevin Miller?’

Who else is on the Crepe hitlist? I think you’ll enjoy seeing Uncle Ron Noades chewed up and spat out by a shark, very appropriate n'est-ce pas? Alan Mullery will be left dangling precariously over a precipice and then we’ll send the old and the frail like Ally Brown and Andy McCulloch to attempt a rescue.

Another disliked old boss, Terry Venables, will go like the bloodsucker he proved to be – a stake through the heart as in Nosferatu: ‘And at that moment, as if by a miracle, the sick no longer died, and the stifling shadow of the vampire vanished with the morning sun.’ That should cure us of him.

Easington beach 1970 – Get Cantona… one blow to the head with a sawn off shotgun: ‘Goodbye, Eric!’. For David Mellor, Chelsea supporting, Evening sub-Standard writing, accursed smug aristo it can only be a trip to Madame La Guillotine, for Brian Horton we reckon an encounter with Zombies a la Day of the Living Dead, which is all things Brighton in a nutshell, and that leaves us with Steve ‘Mr Loyalty’ Bruce himself, we feel that the scissors scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder could be just perfect… stabbed in the back, very apt.