Palace enjoy their behind closed doors day by the seaside.

Palace enjoy their behind closed doors day by the seaside.

Oh we do like to be beside the seaside. For the first time in three long, agonising months Premier League football poked its head out of the cupboard, held back its suppressed laughter and then got on with all of those domestic duties it thought it had completed back in March. Back then it merely seemed as if all the practicalities of Premier League business would be dealt with a familiar aplomb. Premier League leaders Liverpool would win the Premier League title by a country mile, relegation and promotion issues would be resolved quite naturally and everything would be tickety boo. Or so we thought.

Here we are on the longest day of the year in the middle of June and some of us may be in holiday mood rather than looking forward to these cheap, pre-season friendlies that seem to be masquerading as the very last of the remaining fixtures of the Premier League season. In the last couple of days Project Restart for football is beginning to assume the air of a summertime kickabout in the local park. We can barely believe what they're saying and what we're being subjected to and the sooner the end of July comes around the better although we would never wish the year away.

There have been all manner of conflicting reactions to the resumption of the Premier League but some of us are still wrestling with this preposterous absurdity. Has football really lost its marbles, its wherewithal or are we just imagining this all and sooner rather than later we will wake up? But matches will be played out to their straightforward conclusion, sweat will be exerted in the sweltering heat of the English summer, physios will be summoned wearing huge perspex shields and the game will just meander along like some country bumpkin wandering down a country lane.

Still, we've got this far so we might as well carry on. The experts and media pundits are just delighted to be back in a football ground but there are some of us who may be wishing whether this was all worth the bother. This is beginning to feel like some strange dreamscape where the angels play their harps and everything isn't really what it seems it should be. But let's get this Premier League season out of the way and consign it to dusty history before we really think we're in some kind of netherworld.

After all the delays and discussions, excuses and justifications, baffling facts, figures and statistics, football opened up to a fanfare of artificial crowd noises, sponsored silence on the terraces, and an atmosphere more reminiscent of Bournemouth library, a hollow concrete bowl where you could almost hear the traffic outside the Vitality Stadium rather than the traditional roar of a Saturday afternoon crowd inside it.

Football has dealt with all of these problematic imponderables rather like a scientist in a laboratory using every available combination of chemicals in rows and rows of test tubes. Do the players take huge wage cuts? Should there be wage deferrals and more importantly, those wage deferrals where all the players became very self conscious of who they were and whether it wouldn't have been advisable to give something back to the game in the name of local charities?

Now though the Premier League is up and running and acting out the same kind of scripts it was trying to perform to an audience that has suddenly become surplus to requirements. Still you can only deal with the unfortunate circumstances you're presented with. There have been lengthy spots of furloughing of players, players exercising with packets of cereals, a couple of indoor treadmills and one or two compact exercise bikes tucked away in the kitchen. It all seemed rather bizarre and piecemeal but footballers are nothing if not adaptable.

When Liverpool skipper Jordan Henderson came out with the most charitable of all offers with millions given to all struggling families and the elderly he was regarded as some kind of Messiah. Last week Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford laid out his case for a potential OBE with his suggestion that there should be free meals for children during the summer holidays. We have now changed our perceptions of footballers although we knew that some of them did have it in them to react in the way that Henderson and Rashford had.

Meanwhile back at the Vitality Stadium, Bournemouth met Crystal Palace in what may just as well have been a neutral venue. For as far as the eye could see giant pieces of red and black cardboard  had been cut and pasted into the place where the Cherries loyal supporters would have been. There were banks and banks of sponsored names wherever you looked and a section amusingly referred to as the Red Army which would have been more suitable at either Arsenal, Manchester United or Liverpool.

Now it was on a bright sunlit summer evening that Crystal Palace swaggered around the tight confines of Bournemouth's quaint little ground, toyed with Bournemouth like the proverbial doll and then shook the home side like a child's rattle. These have been immensely enjoyable seasons for Bournemouth who, under the bold, idealistic managerial tenure of Eddie Howe, have played some of the most beautifully designed and neatly fashioned football the game has seen for quite a while.

But now that brisk, invigorating South Coast air seems to have got to Bournemouth. The football is still delightful and rather like the sweetest of jams to the palate. The isosceles triangles, the footballing trigonometry, the pleasing angles and the passing movements were all made in heaven. Bournemouth had an almost intimate relationship with the ball and the three seasons of top flight football seems to have done them the world of good.

Sadly now though their residency in the Premier League could be reaching an end. The tapestries are still there for all to see but the stitches are beginning to look both frayed and threadbare. When the red and black shirts took to the pitch at the Vitality Stadium even the trees looking over the ground looked slightly forlorn. Bournemouth are no longer the force of good we thought they'd be for many a season to come and their opponents Crystal Palace simply danced around their hosts at times as if they weren't really there.

Palace of course will now finish the season in either safe mid table security or even on the fringes of the top ten after the kind of season that even their most patient fans might have thought was beyond them. And yet under the dependable and still shrewd Roy Hodgson, Palace have found a way to play the game like a well drilled platoon of army recruits. Their football had both poise and delicacy, attractive interludes and the most eye catching fluency that left Bournemouth gasping at the sea air.

With goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale, defenders Jack Stacey, Steve Cook and Nathan Ake failing to establish any kind of understanding with each other, Bournemouth looked socially awkward and quite possibly distanced. Adam Smith, Jefferson Lerma and Harry Wilson were not really reading the same lines as would normally have been the case and Bournemouth became overwhelmed by a turbo charged Palace attack. David Brooks does look a stunningly honed young talent but when he pulled up with cramp during the second half, the game was up for the Cherries.

When Luka Milivojevic gave Palace the lead early on with an impeccably flighted free kick into the net, Bournemouth looked positively shell shocked as if affronted at their visitors cheek and chutzpah. Shortly Palace were running rings around the home side, hopping and skipping, twisting and turning, dinking and shimmying, spinning and swirling around Bournemouth as if this was just a run of the mill five a side training ground exercise.

Suddenly, the brilliant and effervescent Wilfried Zaha began to show us the fleet footed, bamboozling trickery and close ball control that should come as second nature for any winger. Gary Cahill was playing like one of those hugely experienced defenders who seems to have been around for ages, a player who once gave Chelsea some of their best years. Scott Dann was busy and bustling while Cheikhou Kouyate was a tall and imposing presence who West Ham must be missing like crazy. Then there was Patrick Van Aanholt, constructive, always forward thinking and innovative.

Now it was that the alert and lively Jordan Ayew, Van Aanholt and James McArthur came into their own as effective attacking influences. Now all three were weaving fine silks around the Bournemouth defence. After another delicious collaboration on the wing, the blond Van Aanholt slotted the ball through to the by line where a sharp cut back was almost spoonfed to Ayew who guided the ball home from the closest range for Palace's second and what would prove to be the winning goal.

And so it was that Bournemouth fell even deeper into the briny South Coast water while Palace were casting their eyes on loftier aspirations near the top of the Premier League. It's all systems go for the Premier League and depending on your point of view this could be a very eventful and interesting end to a season that some of us now believe is heading into some Wild West territory where normality still seems an obvious abnormality. Still. it has to be better than the Watney Cup. Pre- season friendlies will never seem the same.