“A gap filler,” Emmerson Boyce light-heartedly says over the club contacting him during the Premier League’s current postponement.
Coincidentally, ‘a gap filler’ is perhaps what Iain Dowie might have first referred to Boyce as, with the former Eagles defender revealing that his start to life in south London wasn’t exactly as he’d planned.
Boyce begins: “I left Luton Town thinking that I’m signing for Crystal Palace, despite a few Championship clubs being interested in me. But the lure of Palace and the Premier League was too good to turn down.”
Laughing, with a hint of a suggestion that Boyce still can’t quite get his head around how the situation he is about to reveal unfolded, he adds: “It was a weird first couple of weeks, though, because I went to Palace thinking that I’m signing for them.