Nottm Forest 4 - 2 Palace

Sat Aug 25 2001 - League

The Eagles were beaten by four goals to two by Nottingham Forest, despite a brace by former Forest man Dougie Freedman.

The home side took the lead after 17 minutes when David Prutton headed the ball past Alex Kolinko.

Four minutes later, Forest doubled their lead through Stern John, who took advantage of poor marking in the Palace defence.

Freedman, who was booed by the home crowd, pulled one back for the visitors on 28 minutes. The Scot headed the ball past Forest keeper Darren Ward from a Tommy Black cross.

Five minutes after the interval, Freedman put the sides level from 10 yards after being put through on goal by Finnish international Aki Riihilahti.

Palace pushed forward to win the game, but a defensive mistake by Steve Thomson in the 72nd minute gave Forest's Marlon Harewood the chance to curled the ball superbly into the top corner.

On 83 minutes, the game was put beyond Palace when a Jamie Smith defensive error enabled John to score into an empty net from five yards.

Man of the match: Freedman (Was keen to impress against his old side and did).

Post match comments:

Crystal Palace boss Steve Bruce was not happy with his side's defence.

He said: "It was probably a good game to watch but sadly for us we have to defend better.

"We can't go on defending like that. The higher up the league you go the more you can't afford to make basic errors. But fair play to them, they went on to win the game.

"Individual mistakes are costing us badly. We are playing very well as a whole but their third and fourth goals were down to bad individual errors.

"We have got a lot of quality and a young, young squad. We scored 13 goals so far in four games but we can't expect to have to keep on scoring all the time to win. And at the moment that's what we are having to do."

Freedman said: "We only had ourselves to blame for making too many mistakes when we were in with a very good chance of winning. "When we got it back to 2-2, I thought we were the only side capable of going on to victory. But we shot ourselves in the foot and to be fair to them their front two played very well."

From The Terrace Photos

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