Burnley 1 - 0 Palace

Tue Oct 23 2001 - League

Crystal Palace's fine run of seven straight wins was ended by a Paul Cook strike after 17 minutes.

The Burnley veteran scored with a sublime lob to earn his side the first win in six games.

The Eagles were without Dougie Freedman, who had the flu and he was badly missed. Julian Gray had a chance to put the visitors ahead on ten minutes but his 25-yard left-foot shot clipped the top of the bar.

After the interval, Palace played with more purpose and Burnley sat back. David Hopkin came very close to the equaliser, but Burnley skipper Steve Davis cleared the danger with a fine header.

In the 63rd minute, Palace claimed a penalty when Briscoe appeared to handle a Hopkin cross, but referee Clattenburg waved away the appeals.

Palace, however, remain top of the league table after this first defeat in eight games.

Man of the Match:

Post match comments:

Steve Bruce believes the main reason that the superb winning run came to end was the loss of leading scorer Dougie Freedman who fell victim to flu.

Bruce said: "We lost Dougie with flu - which took away our cutting edge. He and Clinton Morrison have been playing very well up front and we lost a lot of our fluidity.

"But I can't remember them having many shots at all and I thought we deserved something from the game.

"It was a typical top-of-the-table clash, a bit fraught, with both sides fighting hard, and we didn't deserve to lose.

"Stan showed his respect by changing his formation, but we lacked our usual edge up front."

When asked if Cook meant to chip Matt Clarke from such an acute angle for the winning goal Bruce replied: "I don't think so, I thought he was just trying to hook the ball back in the box.

"But we've made tremendous progress in the last couple of months and though we didn't play particularly well overall here we deserved something.

"No-one is going to run away with this league this season like Fulham and Blackburn last year - we've just got to try to be consistent."

Bruce's counterpart Stan Ternent was happy with his side's win.

He said: "It was a tough game, with not a lot of chances, but the players responded fantastically well after the disappointment of Saturday (conceding a late equaliser to Barnsley).

"We changed our system and matched them man to man and it worked.

"They had a couple of half-chances, that's all and we shut them out well."

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