Football: Football: Smith's smart route to Palace resurgence: Tighter dress and discipline and a looser playing style lie behind Eagles' promotion push. Joe Lovejoy reports

THE Crystal Palace management were not at their best, but they were not alone. Happy-hour ale at 95p a pint had been irresistible and both Alan Smith and his assistant, David Kemp, had got 'absolutely delirious'.

At least they had the morning-after excuse. Their team had been paragons of sobriety, yet still looked never-again fragile in losing 1-0 at Sunderland on Wednesday night.

The Eagles' wings had been clipped, but were they downhearted? Only briefly. The long retreat to south London - the coach nosed in some time after 4am - was wearisome in the extreme, but a few hours' sleep and a quick glance at the table was all it took to revive the spirits in good time for tomorrow's promotion derby against their erstwhile tenants, Charlton Athletic.

Palace are still flying high at the top of the First Division, well placed to bounce back at the first attempt after the relegation which cost them an estimated pounds 6m in lost revenue, not to mention their bright, but brittly sensitive young manager.

When Steve Coppell succumbed to the pressure and walked away there was the time-honoured round-up of the usual suspects - Dave Bassett, Ray Wilkins, etc - before the chairman, Ron Noades, decided that while new ideas were needed, a new broom was not.

Smith, the assistant manager for five years, was promoted on a permanent basis on 3 June, less than a fortnight after Coppell's resignation. If the fans found the appointment uninspiring at the time, there are no complaints nine months on, with Palace five points clear of their nearest rivals, Leicester City and Nottingham Forest, and 10 ahead of Charlton, who are fifth.

Promotion would be a fitting reward in this, the 10th season at Selhurst Park for a man whose standing on the coaching circuit is in contrast to a public profile that borders on the subterranean.

Before getting down to Palace's resurgence it was time to fill in a few of the blanks. The young Alan Smith had been a decent player - 'better than I was given credit for' - whose professional career with Brentford came to grief in cautionary circumstances.

'I was 20 years old and it was the Swinging Sixties. Even playing for Brentford you thought you were big-time because you were knocking about with the Fulham group - Rodney Marsh, Stevie Earle and all that lot - and the Chelsea lads, John Dempsey, Barry Lloyd and so on. We all used to go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais.

'Anyway, I had this Triumph Herald - a smart car then - and one night the captain's wife asked me for a lift. I'd had three or four pints, but I dropped her off. Then I hit four lampposts on the way home. I ended up in Charing Cross hospital with both legs broken, and that was that as far as my playing prospects were concerned.

'Now, when I nag young players about behaviour, I know they think they're the first ones to be at it. What they don't realise is that I'm speaking from experience.'

After a wasted year, pondering how getting legless could have left him just that, salvation came in the form of a phone call.

'A fella called Sidney Black rang. He was a multi-millionaire who used to run Wimbledon. Mega rich he was. Anyway, he said: 'I'd like you to come and play for Wimbledon.' Some offer, I thought. Wimbledon were the pits. They were in the old Isthmian League in those days. Amateurs. I didn't fancy it one iota, but then he said: 'Why don't you come and work for me, as well?' That did it.

'When I got to his office - he had a big property company in the West End - I found the whole Wimbledon football team were employed by him, including the manager. At a time when the average office worker's wage was 20 quid a week he gave us 30, which was good money.

'I didn't really do any work, I just used to turn up and collect my money, but it allowed me to get back into football. It was a good break. It enabled me to make a few bob on the property side and get into coaching as well.'

Smith had graduated to reserve- and youth-team coach at Plough Lane by the time Wimbledon eventually burst upon an unsuspecting Football League in 1977. He was probably the first victim. 'I was on 20 quid a week, and it was cash in hand in those days in non-League football. When we got in the League Ron Noades was the chairman - that's where I met him - and he called me in and said: 'I've got to give everyone a proper contract now. You'll still get your 20 quid a week - less pounds 5 tax and pounds 1 National Insurance.' I was six quid worse off.'

Exit Disgusted of SW19, just round the South Circular, to Dulwich Hamlet. 'I was a bit crafty - I went to Dulwich as manager and took half Wimbledon's reserve and youth teams with me. We won the First Division of the Isthmian League in my first year.'

Fast forward to Smith's arrival at Palace, in 1984, and inevitably there is a tale to be told. 'I was appointed youth coach to Alan Mullery. I said to my wife: 'I've got the youth-team job, it should be really good.' Next day I go in to see Mullers and say: 'I'm your new youth coach.' He said: 'Well I'm sorry, but we haven't got a bloody youth team.' I ended up picking up dog muck off the local park so that George Wood could do extra goalkeeping work.

'Eventually they made me reserve-team coach, and I said to Mullers one day: 'You've got to sort the chairman out. We're training in the local park, there's blokes coming from the pub to play, we've got no youth team and there are no balls to train with.' He rang me and said: 'I've sorted it'. I said: 'Good, how did you get on?' He said: 'I got the sack.' That's when Steve came.'

Under Coppell Palace were promoted from the old Second Division in 1989 and went on to enjoy the most prosperous spell in their history, getting to the FA Cup final in 1990, when Manchester United needed a replay to beat them, and coming third, their highest finish in the League, the following year.

Success was founded on a laissez-faire management style and a pair of strikers, Ian Wright and Mark Bright. While it was good it was very good, but when it turned bad it was horrid.

Coppell, intelligent and responsible, believed that if he treated his players like adults they would behave likewise. Unfortunately the street-wise south Londoners were not made in his sober image, and one England international, no longer with the club, used to delight in seeing how far he could go. Childish of Croydon trained for a whole session in a sheepskin coat and deliberately overturned the dessert trolley in a hotel restaurant in full view of his most indulgent of managers, without rebuke.

In good times, boorish behaviour is tolerated as 'high jinks'. When results are bad it becomes 'indiscipline' and questions are asked in the boardroom. Last season's decline and fall found Noades critical of Coppell's regime in the columns of various newspapers, and the die was cast.

Coppell, in turn, felt betrayed by the sale of his best player, Wright, against his wishes. Taking Arsenal's money for the most prolific striker in the country was a demonstration of the club's lack of ambition, he felt. Chairman and manager, once inseparable, had lost confidence in each other, and a parting of the ways was inevitable, even without relegation.

Smith had seen it coming. 'Once Wright had gone, it all started to crumble,' he says. 'Certainly Bright was never quite the same. He missed his partner.

'Steve and I thought then that we'd gone as far as we could go. It's almost impossible to replace that sort of player and it doesn't matter how good a coach you are, you're always dependent on your players. We lost our best, and I think their departure affected the others. It certainly affected the manager. I wasn't surprised when he went. He'd had enough. Events over a period of time had got him down.'

Palace were deemed unlucky to be relegated on goal difference, but they had been 'tempting fate', Smith says. 'We hadn't done well the season before, and there were certain things that just weren't right. We were a bit slack. It's probably best that I don't say any more.'

The changes he has made offer clues to the old malaise. Nearly pounds 100,000 has been spent on 'smartening up' the training ground, and the players have had the same treatment. Club blazers and ties are now de rigueur.

'As soon as you start using the word discipline you conjure up the wrong image, but if you're a professional sportsman you should turn up on time, conduct yourself properly and look the part.

'The training ground is a better place to work now, and there's more variety to everything. I brought in a new assistant (Kemp) and there was a newness about it all. From the day they reported back after the summer, they realised it was a new era. They weren't coming back to the same old thing. There was a new sparkle to the place.'

The innovations were not all his own ideas. 'I decided on the new dress code - blazer and flannels - because I'd seen it at Manchester United and Arsenal, and theirs seemed to be a good example to follow. We've got an unequal pay structure here. There are lads earning a lot ( pounds 3,000 a week) and others earning nothing ( pounds 140), and the young players would like to dress in Armani suits, too, but can't afford to. I'm not running a regiment here. It's just common sense.'

The exodus which can follow relegation had been avoided. Two influential players, Eddie McGoldrick and Geoff Thomas, had insisted on leaving, but the nucleus of the team - Martyn, Thorn, Young, Humphrey, Salako and Armstrong - had remained intact.

'I got them in early on and sat them down individually to see how they felt. Once I had explained what we were going to do, and how we were going to do it, they agreed to give it a go. Nigel (Martyn) and Eric (Young) haven't missed a game. They've been the rocks we've built on.'

The playing style had changed, as well as the preparation, Smith eschewing the long ball in favour of a passing game. 'When we had Wright and Bright it was easy to get it up to them, and route one was probably the best. Behind them we had Thomas and Pardew, which was not, with respect, a passing midfield. Now we've got different players, and we're trying to knock it around a bit more.'

It was going well. Better than he had expected? 'Not really. I always knew we had some really good players - players I believe in - and that with a little bit of organisation and a new way of going about it we could be successful. I was never in any doubt about that. It was just a question whether I could do it.

'For the first three months as manager I was still trying to be the assistant manager - still trying to be friendly to everybody. A lot of these guys have known me since I was their youth coach and there's no doubt that familiarity does breed contempt. So over the last three months I've been much more detached. I'm not worried about upsetting anyone any more.'

The pounds 1.4m he has just spent on Watford's Bruce Dyer and Damian Matthew of Chelsea may not be the end. 'I've got one or two things tucked up my sleeve which may or may not happen before the transfer deadline. Really, though, I don't think I actually need anybody. We're in a very strong position to go up.

'It's a matter now of just keeping our nerve. I'll give them a little prod and a poke, but I like to keep things on an even keel. I'm not an extremist person. I'm Steady Eddie.'

Steady as she goes should do it. 'We've done what's required up to now, and I don't see why it should be any different over the run-in. We've got a good team and when we're playing well we're different class. We take some holding.'

If he gets them up first time, he will be feted as a hero - Pooper scooper becomes super duper. Break a leg, Alan.

(Photograph omitted)