Palace 2 - 2 West Bromwich Albion

Saturday February 3 2001 - League

Despite a very early 2-0 lead, Palace could not manage to take all three points from the game against West Brom at Selhurst Park.

Palace had a good start of the game with Mikael Forssell opening the score after only two minutes.

Jamie Pollock then doubled the lead four minutes later. He power-headed a Simon Rodger corner in to the top corner of Brian Jensen's goal.

Then Palace made the mistake of taking the foot off the gas and that enabled West Brom to come back into the game.

West Brom's Lee Hughes had a big chance in the 10th minute, but his curling shot hit the outside of the post.

The Baggies had to wait until a few minutes before the interval to score their first goal. Richard Sneekes fired a free kick behind Alex Kolinko.

After the break, West Brom were looking for the equaliser with Kolinko making two great saves to deny Hughes and Roberts.

On 55 minutes however, Hughes got the equaliser for The Baggies when he skipped past Palace's offside trap, dribbled past Kolinko and placed the ball into an empty net.

Five minutes later, Albion thought they scored their third, but Roberts' goal was disallowed by the referee.

Palace are 16th in the Nationwide First Division after this draw.

Post match comments

Alan Smith said: "It's a fair result. Until we stop giving away silly goals, it's going to be like that. Defensively we were a very poor team, it's something we really need to sort out."

West Brom manager Gary Megson said: "The start of the game was an absolute shambles, we had loads of chances but didn't take them.

"We're going to make life very difficult for ourselves with that sort of defending. It had to be seen to be believed - the defending was so poor it is untrue.

"What we have going for ourselves is our firepower. But at the back we need to get people to talk a bit more and organise a bit more."

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