South London Having spent what seemed a lifetime on London's Heath Robinson like transport system, straining in vain to make out what the non-English speaking station announcers were saying, you arrive in Norwood. South London is one of those places on the planet where a meteor could strike and it would be weeks before anyone noticed. There are some nice parts in our capital. The ones you see on postcards and on TV, where they allow tourists. This isn't one of them. Penalties It's easy to see why Palace get so many. They have quick wide players that run at speed into the box and go down at every opportunity. Some times this is legal, many times it is not. If they get the penalties for the ones that are, why not cards for simulating when they don't? That said, the 2nd penalty was a joke. The lino must have given it to get his own back after we had given him so much abuse for getting a handful of offside decisions horribly wrong. Diving The last time I saw an opposition do more it was QPR. Let's see, who was the manager? Ian Holloway. Coincidence, or does he coach his teams to behave like that? Kevin Philips One penalty that wasn't, one scuffed, one deflected (on a counter after a much more obvious penalty that wasn't give). Still, he showed the value of a cool head and an eye for goal. Bastard. Wing Backs Elmo and Brady saw a lot of the ball but Palace didn't allow them to get to the byline. Whenever they ran at the defense they either had to unload the ball or they ran into trouble. Palace were then quick to counter and that was our undoing. Wilfred Zaha He will do well in the Premier League. Diving, sulking, harassing the ref, petulant fouls: he has it all. I half expected him to join the Crystal Girls at the interval, such was his footwork and lack of manly qualities. Oh, and when he gets over himself and remembers to play football as well, there is a really good player hiding under there, as he showed with some of his play last night. The Strategy Palace played well on the break. They didn't look like a team that controls games with sustained pressure and breaks down stubborn opposition. I love the attacking philosophy our team has. Last night we may have been better served by being less adventurous, drawing Palace forward and hitting them on the break more. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. George Boyd After the brilliant home debut he was off the pace last night and much less influential. We have seen enough to know (think) that Saturday was more indicative of what he will be capable of. The Result But for two penalties (one given in error, one not given in error) we might have snatched something but overall the better team won and it would be very, very misleading to construct an argument that we deserved any points. 8pm Kickoff Why do Palace always kick off later than the other games? For me it meant more pleasure on London Transport, more unintelligible announcers and then an hour on Liverpool Street with the cleaners, the rodents and the vagrants waiting for the last train home which stops at every bloody station on the line. I refuse to leave before the end but a 7:45 kick off would have got me home over an hour and half earlier...
Excellent summary. Luckily for me its 90 mins door to door pretty much regardless of finish time, and yeah, they are a good team but the cheating players and incompetent ref spoiled what would have been a fairly good game for me. I woulda been happy with a point and without the aforementioned cheating, wouldn't have been so pissed off with losing. Here's hoping for a similar Saturday to last Saturday.
Promotion is over, can't lose 2 on the bounce at this crucial stage and after Monday well have a very big game of catch up to play.
A guy in front of me yesterday told me they've had 20 penalties, 14 at home, and 4 in one game. After last night I witnessed why, I was disgusted I've never seen a team dive so much and the ref just gave them a free kick every time. Holloway is a **** too.
Funnily enough a Palace supportnig mate told me he thought we were dirty! Seems even the home fans are taken in by the endless diving their players get up to. It's an absolute disgrace and it's not a new thing either - they've been at it at least since the days of Andy Johnson. Referees need to be wiser to it, last night's just gave a free kick ever time someone went down. So long as you reward behaviour like that, people will do it. Glad we don't act like that though, it's pathetic.
Until last night we were top of the fair play table, committed the least fouls and conceded the least penalties in the league. It speaks for itself when that team comes to down and notches up as many fouls as they'd manged in an entire game and given away as many penalties as they had done all season BEFORE half time. It's an absolute disgrace and it's when bullshit like this happens I really could not give a **** about football anymore.
I heard Palace fans walking out of the ground saying "I think they realised the only way to beat us was to go through the back of us and foul us" Incredible. I'd rather get beat 4-2 then play like those disgraceful cheats.
They do genuinely seem to think that they play some kind of otherworldly football and that when their players are falling over every five minutes it is a result of thuggish football from the oppposing team. They are completely deluded, like Arsenal fans used to be a few years ago when Stoke, Bolton and Blackburn et al used to regularly beat them. Apparently they have struggled against more physical teams this year, you can see why. With a strong ref they would get nowhere.
Holloways a prize tosser , after his rant on sky the other week about watfords loans , he sells a 15million player gets him back ,strengthens his side with loanees , with some of that money ,I mean How can that be right? Its not on , okay its in the rules but its just not on! Sound familiar! loanees scored all their goals last night, A permie hornet scored ours and another academy graduate was again outstanding in goal (Take a bow John Bond). Really hope its Udinese B and Egypt B who get promoted , stuff Mankys mob and cheating ollies eagles.
The most important thing is what the **** was Zaha doing when he tried to celebrate his goal? We let someone score whilst having an epileptic fit or a seizure, if that's not cause for concern re our defence, I don't know what is..... [video]http://www.101greatgoals.com/gvideos/crystal-palace-4-hull-2/[/video]
The Football League Fair Play table copied below. I think this was before last night's game (being near the bottom is good in this case).
Oooh yeah good point. Luckily Burnley was one of the games I'd decided a while ago I wasn't going to subject myself to, thank fook I did, getting there 2 days early would have been awkward! Still narked about last night, they made DQPR look like solid, non cheating bastards. Someone near me last night made a comment along the lines of we should do what they do, because not doing it costs us games. Some young lad tore into him and said he'd rather we lost than play like that. I almost hugged him, it was the brightest spot in a miserable night.
