Crystal Palace have issued a statement confirming their grudging acceptance of the inevitable appointment of Neil Warnock.
The south London side had made increasingly frenzied attempts to find a replacement for Tony Pulis but eventually gave in to the universe’s immutable designs and appointed Warnock.
A clearly tired yet eerily calm Palace supremo Steve Parish called a press conference to break the news to fans.
“Crystal Palace FC would like to announce the appointment of Neil Warnock,” Parish told FourFourTwo.
“I want to assure the supporters that as a club we left no stone unturned in the search for the best man to take this club forward.
“Sadly in the end there was little point in turning over all those stones because, however much we liked to pretend otherwise, we were always going to appoint Neil Warnock.
“I, more than anyone else, would love us to be standing here and telling you we had snapped up a Spanish tactical wizard, or at least Steve Clarke, or an unnaturally high-functioning dog or something, but in the end we cannot fight fate. We are Crystal Palace and this is Neil Warnock.
“On the bright side, though, we’ve still got all his old tracksuits, so I guess that’ll save us some money.”
Warnock then stated his complete indifference to being reinstalled as Palace boss, stressing that he ‘kind of thought he still was the club’s manager’ but glancing at Google Maps he confirmed that ‘at least the commute would be marginally shorter than his trip to BT Sport’.
