Gillingham 4 - 1 Palace

Tuesday December 26 2000 - League

Oh I really hate Boxing Day games. Just like last year against Charlton, we lost badly in the freezing cold and being half asleep after the early 12pm KO.

Anyway, to the game. Morrison, Mullins, Forrsell and others wasted a hatful of chances in the beginning. We should have been at least 1-0 up when Palace fan, Carl Asaba scored. It was poor defending and Kolinko perhaps should have had his near post covered for it.

Following from the Blackburn game we get another bad referee. He let the Gills team clatter everyone including getting Austin stretchered off. This was the turning point of the game. I cannot remember any of their players getting booked for the challenge.

Kolinko who made a few good saves, came out well to clear a long ball, which he did many times that day, and after getting the ball and the line-o flagged offside anyway, injured Paul Shaw. Kolinko got booked, even though he got the ball first!

We got a penalty and a chance to get back into the game. Mullins got involved in a mellee after the spot-kick was awarded and got booked with their keeper.

Ruddock came on after Austin went off before this and you could argue lost the game for us. First he took the ball off Morrison to take the kick and struck a weak shot for the keeper to make an easy save. Even though he usually always blasts them.

Then for their second goal, he lazily watched a wayward cross go out of play, but a Gills player kept it in, crossed over Ruddock (who did not jump at all, if he would, it would have been cleared away) and Asaba scored an easy tap-in. 0-2.

Dougie got one back (1-2) as we finally scored our first penalty of the season out of five or six attempts. The penalty came about after a Gills player handled in the area. The ref did not book the player, but booked Pollock moments earlier after an accidental hand ball by the corner flag.

A terrible clearance by Kolinko went straight to Asaba and Smith could not get back in time to stop him from making it 3-1.

We could not get back into it and sub Onoura added a fourth right at the end.

I think Asaba was keen to do well against the team he supported as a boy - maybe we should go in for him. But it was mainly to do with tiredness in the players with so many games in a short space of time. Ruddock did not help matters with his sloppy play and is a liability to the team.

Post match comments

Alan Smith said: "I haven't got any sympathy for anybody at the moment. I need to have a few words with my players in the morning about our performance and I don't think it warrants a day off. 4-1 is an horrific scoreline."

Gillingham boss Andy Hessenthaler said: "Asaba will get all the accolades after this game and he caused Palace all sorts of problems."

"We always said that the Christmas and New Year period was a big time for us in terms of results. The level of performance has been fantastic and now we want to concentrate on doing that for the rest of the season."

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