Tuesday, 4 January 2011

Bristol City 1 Crystal Palace 1 - Catch Up

Following a couple of weeks of bad weather, man-flu, Christmas celebrations and not a little alcohol abuse, I will attempt to catch up on the couple of games I managed to attend over the festive season.

First up was the Championship clash between the Robins and Palace.

My clipping from the paper

I saw the same game last season when Palace had a perfectly good goal ruled out after the referee failed to spot the ball hit the frame in the back of the net and bounce back into play – assuming it had hit an advertising hoarding behind the goal.

In this game Palace had the right to feel aggrieved as well after Brett Pitman equalized from the spot in the 94th minute.

Neil Danns had opened the scoring in the 2nd minute and was a class apart in midfield as Lee Johnson and Marvin Elliott failed to cope with him.

On wag in the press box wondered aloud whether there was any chance of Palace swapping number eights during the transfer window and while this might have been a little harsh on Johnson, the fact that Danns is out of contract in the summer must see him packing his bags for a final career move at some point soon.

Keith Millen’s side rode their luck in this one, but to their credit, they never gave up and so for guts and determination alone, they probably deserved something out of it, although Palace will beg to differ.

To their credit, Palace played with a passion that belied their position in the relegation zone and they certainly didn’t look as though they were a team who wanted rid of their manager. Surprising then that George Burley found himself out of a job only a few days later when Millwall stuffed them by three goals.

Talking of Millwall; one of the south London press lads took a call from a colleague in the first half and was in stitches after ending it. It turns out his colleague was down for the Millwall game that afternoon, but had been told the game kicked off at five o’clock and so was desperately trying to get to the New Den before the final whistle!




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