Palace 2 - 3 Nottm Forest

Monday August 28 2000 - League

The phrase 'A game of two halves' certainly described this match exactly.

Palace, in the first half, were absolutely pants. Devoid of any creatvity, poor passing and once again sluggish defending cost us dear. GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY were Hayden Mullins and Fan Zhiyi who were being pulled all over the place in the first half. Fan later did some pushing of his own, but more about that later.

With ten minutes gone and Black and Gray had made some nice touches and this looked like more of the assured Palace which had gone on to beat Huddersfield. Then, a needless free kick given away by Pollock. Bart-Williams places it on to an UNMARKED Andy Johnson and bang, 0 - 1. AAAAAAAAARGH!!!

The frustration is clear as 10 minutes later Bart-Williams from another free kick pulls the same stunt, this time Stern John is denied by Taylor. WHY WHY WHY CAN'T WE LEARN FROM THESE BASIC ERRORS??!!!

It happenend again for the second goal. A Forest corner was knocked down by Stern John and Platt rifled in from 15 yards, giving Taylor no chance, 0-2. An injury to Neil Ruddock unsettled the Palace team by this stage, but there was not a lot they could do about the crazy nature of goal number three.

To top it all, Palace conceded a third before half time. The ever impressive, and dirty cheating Jack Lester, who had wound the Palace faithful and defenders up by his persistant diving, broke clear and sent a cross which a back tracking Hayden Mullins converted, 0 - 3. Rightly the crowd booed the team off at half time as they had been poor. Especially as Forest are not very good and we made them look better than they really were.

The second half began with the cups of tea having flown in the half time interval, Palace played like men possessed and Forest began like rabbits caught in headlights. Five minutes gone and a poor clearance by Tony Vaughan was punished by a rasping 25 yard effort by Tommy Black, scoring his first league goal for Palace past the evergreen (more like past it) Dave Beasant.

Palace then bombarded the forest goal without any further joy. Forsell in particular was guilty also of ball hogging and Smith brought him off, bringing on Leon McKenzie. His partner in crime, Clinton Morrison pulled up with what can only be descirbed as a pulled hamstring at best, which the referee, clearly on the Forest side of things took an age to get Gary Sadler on. The atmosphere is boiling now...

Craig Harrison, who had played well all match was booked on 71 minutes for a somewhat innocous challenge and soon after that Smith finally took off Clinton Morrison, bringing on Wayne Carlisle and pushing up Fan Zhiyi... what an idea...

Fan then caused all sorts of havoc in the Forest box and Palace won two corners in quick succession. Carlisle provided a precision cross which Fan headed in... YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! Pandamonium had by all!

Minutes later a great ball from Simon Rodger had Fan leaving the Forest defence in tatters and he was brought down by the on rushing (faster than a speeding pensioner) Beasant. Fan goes down, although got up long enought to kick Vaughan in the chest!), Beasant goes off and Roche comes on.

I am on my knees praying that for once, just for once luck would shine on us. Gray steps up... SCORES and its all over, Palace 3 -3 and oh er.........no. ENCROACHMENT from whom????

Gray retakes...SAVED (oh no!) and the last chance goes... I'll never forget all those bloody Midlanders celebrating.....oh well always piss on the right side of the Trent.....(de do de do de do de do de do!)

Chant of the match: What is it like to have no dick? (To fat Forest fan) Man of The Match: Fan Zhiyi (end to end, the man is a legend!) Villian: Jack Lester - Diving better than Klinsmann! (thought the ref was giving him marks for artistic impression rather than a talking to!)

All in a day supporting Palace!

Post match comments

Palace boss Alan Smith said: "I like youth and freshness, but it finds you out against players like Platt. I think we were unlucky not to get a point."

"The melee at the end spoiled a great game. If any of my players are involved I will deal with it internally."

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