September 13 2015

Yohan Cabaye and Jason Puncheon are all set to raid the Man City goal.

Current league leaders Manchester City were to be entertained at Selhurst. Jamesey joined the throng but a disappointing 0-1 loss was the result.

A pleasant and sunny Saturday afternoon (Sept 12) with a hint of autumn, set the scene for a sell-out encounter with Manchester's other billionaire outfit - the one in blue.

The fixture had impressive national football credentials, being between the leaders and second-placed teams in the Heapsomoulah League.

It was your columnist's third trip to our stadium this season, having seen us lose narrowly to Arsenal and beat Aston Villa.

But it was our unexpected (by all but the most faithful Eagles aficionados) victory at Stamford Bridge a fortnight previously that caused a stir, to put it mildly.

The victory was no fluke and Palace looked the better team on the day. Admittedly Chelsea are not the power they once were this season but even a couple of totally biased Blues-supporting friends admitted to me that we deserved the win. And Jose Mourinho should get full credit for his post-game handshake and hug to Alan Pardew. The defeat in front of Jose's own ultra-critical supporters must have been a bitter pill to swallow and he acted with grace and sportsmanship.

Nevertheless, City are the form team of the division and just looking at the skill and firepower they can unleash makes opponents apprehensive.

The Eagles started the match with full-out assaults on the Sainsbury end goal although the movement of Samir Nasri, Sergio Aguero and Aleksander Kolarov always threatened Alex McCarthy's goal.

My own personal favourite, James McArthur, played his customary superb midfield role, tackling well and passing accurately and intelligently and having a crack at goal himself when it looked on. It was a pleasure to see him score against Germany for Scotland in their Euro-qualifier. The player must be one of CPFC's finest acquisitions of recent years.

Another highly-rated Eagle, Scott Dann, is being talked about in the Press as a contender for the England squad at next year's Euro finals.

In a national newspaper interview Scott is quoted as saying that as a defender you want to test yourself against the best strikers, one of whom, Sergio Aguero, would face him in the City clash.

I hope Scott doesn't include "testing" himself in the same category as his reckless and injury-threatening tackle on Aguero early in the match. For once this writer can only agree with City boss, Manuel Pellegrini, who thought it was a red card offence.

If Scott's idea was to hobble Aguero's considerable ability it would be a great shame and be going back to the days when every team had a hard man - Billy Bremner, Nobby Stiles, Chopper Harris, etc. Today's referees would immediately crack down on some of the stuff they dished out to skilful forwards.

But to be fair there was some pretty rough tackling coming from the blue team too. One of Yaya Toure's bone-crunchers incensed Alan Pardew enough to see him enter Pellegrini's technical area and remonstrate with the Man City boss. However all ended well with love and kisses (sort of...).

City moved up a gear in the second half and at times looked like breaking through but it was touch and go for most of the time.

Into time added on, both teams were probably prepared to settle for a goalless draw which would have been a just result.

Then came that horrible moment for the Eagles.

With literally a couple of minutes to go, on came Kelechi Iheanacho from the Blues bench. Who he, I hear you say?

Young Kelechi is a Nigerian teenager who proceeded to score the winning goal for City after a spill by the Eagles keeper and made it five wins on the trot and 15 points for the Manchester outfit.

It's always gut-wrenching to lose by a single goal in injury time but it happens and at the conclusion of all the Bagsodosh League's Saturday fixtures, Pellegrini's team remained firm at the helm and CPFC had slipped into fourth place, overtaken by the familiar names of Man Utd and Arsenal.

There has been media talk that the latest injection of TV money has narrowed the gap between the elite and the rest. It is very early days as yet but the performances of Palace, Leicester and Swansea tend to point that way. We will see as the season progresses and the billionaire clubs use their extra depth in players to their advantage.

A final thought. While my good friend Trish and I were Clapham Junction bound, moaning pathetically about that City killer punch, we had to admit that only a couple of seasons ago we would probably have been relieved to get away without a severe stuffing from a top, in-form club. It does go to show how far we've come in a relatively short time.

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

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