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Ray & Ray: How two Palace men shaped football’s future in 1982

At Fulham in the mid-1980s, three men called Ray began carving out tactics in the design of a team set for 2020. Their forward-thinking approach would see them fly up the league and set a precedent that every football manager and tactics hipster would fuss over 35 years later.

Between their role pioneering new structures in football and today, two of the three Rays came to Palace and left memorable impacts in the history of the club. They are, of course, Ray Houghton and Ray Lewington.

Aged 20 in 1982, Houghton arrived as a fresh-faced Scotsman joining a talented Fulham team which had just secured its return to the second tier of the English pyramid.