Venables had been Allison’s assistant after hanging up his boots at Selhurst Park, and after taking the top job he set about building the ‘Team of the Eighties’.
The club’s youth side had won the FA Youth Cup in 1977 and 1978, with players like Vince Hilaire, Terry Fenwick and Kenny Sansom, and these were soon integrated into the first-team.
Promotion to the second tier in 1977 was followed by a famous return to the top-flight in 1979 against Burnley, in front of a record crowd of more than 50,000 at Selhurst Park.
Indeed, in Venables’ first season as a top-flight manager, Palace topped the English football pyramid for the first and only time in September 1979. They ended the 1979/80 season in 13th place, at the time the club’s highest-ever league finish.
After leaving Palace in 1980, he went on to have a remarkable career in the dugout, managing Barcelona, Tottenham Hotspur and, perhaps most memorably, England during the home Euro ’96 campaign.
Venables passed away in November 2023 at the age of 80. He remains a beloved, and much-missed figure, in South London.