Nottm Forest 0 - 3 Palace

Sunday January 14 2001 - League

Mikael Forssell scored two as Crystal Palace beat Nottingham Forest by three goals to nil at the City Ground.

Finnish international Forssell found the net before the interval, while former Forest man Dougie Freedman added a third to the Eagles tally after the break.

Forest started well, hitting the crossbar after just 68 seconds, it was 17-year-old Jermaine Jenas who missed from close range.

Forest then had two other big opportunities to open the scoring, but new signing David Johnson and Riccardo Scimeca could not find the net.

The Eagles then got back into the game and on 17 minutes, Palace could have gone 1-0 up, but Andrejs Rubins' shot was saved by Forest goalkeeper Dave Beasant.

Three minutes later however, the ball found its way into the Nottingham net. Forssell picked up a loose ball, followed by some neat footwork and struck the ball into the left corner from 20 yards.

Palace's second came deep into first-half injury time. Forest captain Chris Bart-Williams lost the ball to Clinton Morrison, who took the ball into the penalty area and unselfishly passed it to Forssell who scored his 10th of the season.

The second half started the same as the first, Nottingham having the best of the play but not able to find the net. Substitute Stern John had a good chance to pull one back, but he also hit the crossbar.

Freedman came on for Morrison on 63 minutes and only five minutes later, he delivered the sucker punch.

Freedman was boo-ed by the Forest fans but silenced them by sidefooting home a low Rubins cross.

Palace moved up to 14th place after this win with 31 points from 27 matches.

Post-match comments

Palace boss Alan Smith was pleased by his side's finishing in the club's third away win of the season.

Smith said: "Ours was superb, but it is not for me to comment on Forest's."

It was a memorable week for Smith's side with a 2-1 Worthington Cup semi-final, first leg triumph over Liverpool in midweek.

Smith said: "I was a little worried there might be a reaction today because it is easy for players to start believing their own publicity.

"We were off the pace to start with. Although it's nice to be doing well in the cups, our main job is to get the club as high in the league as possible, so that was a good day's work."

Morrison was far from pleased after being substituted and in an angry reaction, threw his tracksuit top into the dug-out.

Smith said it was: "Clinton being Clinton. He wants to score in every game and play in every game. But I want him firing on all cylinders against Sunderland in our FA Cup replay on Wednesday night."

Morrison commented: "It was just handbags as I was disappointed. But it has all been forgotten now."

Losing boss David Platt said: "We contributed to our own downfall again today by missing so many chances.

"We didn't react well to going a goal down and their second on the stroke of half-time effectively killed us off. But you've really got to give credit to Crystal Palace for the way they counter-attacked us."

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