November 18 2012

Rams skewered at Selhurst

Jamesey's latest trip to Dreamsville (aka Selhurst Park) saw Derby's Rams get well tupped.

It's been an eventful couple of weeks since I last sharpened my electronic quill. On my previous trip to Selhurst (Nov 3) we were introduced to our new boss, Ian Holloway.

Under the guidance of the soon-to-depart Curtis Fleming, we despatched Blackburn Rovers 2-0 and left ourselves in a handy third place in the Championship.

To my eternal regret, illness prevented me from attending our game with Ipswich the following Tuesday (Nov 6) and, strike me pink (if not purple with delight) we despatched the Tractor Boys back to swede-bashing territory with a 5-0 victory. That result sent us to the top of the league, a position in which we still remain as I write.

I rarely get to any away games these days so I listened to our fixture with Peterborough (Nov 10) on Palace Player. We stayed a goal down for most of the match and I would guess that like many long-term Eagles supporters, I feared that our lovely run had come to an end.

But these are distinctly abnormal times for our club and we banged in a couple in the dying minutes to make it 1-2 and collect three more points.

A welcome distraction during the week was the selection by manager Roy Hodgson of our Anglo/Ivorian starlet, Wilfried Zaha, for an international friendly against Sweden.

Perhaps my memory is getting ever more rusty but it seems an age since a Palace player wore an England shirt in a senior game.

In the early 90s England internationals littered the Selhurst turf like the current crop of autumn leaves and we were proud to see the likes of Geoff Thomas, Andy Gray, Nigel Martyn, John Salako and Ian Wright on call for Three Lions duty.

But those heady days have long departed and I was honestly worried that the unbelievable amount of media hype would have an adverse effect on young Wilf.

On the other side of the coin, Ian Holloway rushed to Wilf's defence over media comment that there was a big difference between playing against Peterborough's defence and an international defence.

If Wilf had started against Sweden who would he have been up against? Olsson who plays for Blackburn Rovers and was turned inside out by the Zaha treatment a couple of weeks back. Well said, Ollie.

Anyhow after a poor England performance and a 4-2 defeat, our lad only came on the field for a few minutes, hardly enough time to make any serious judgment on his international prospects.

A healthy crowd of 16,211 (including about 1,000 Rams supporters) turned out for the Derby County match (Nov 17).

It was very much the mixture as before - a splendid performance from the Eagles although with only a slender 1-0 lead at half time, the opening stages of the second half, when the Rams came back and posed quite a few problems, were worrying.

But never fear at the moment. Andre Moritz added a second and the immense Glenn Murray made it a brace for himself towards the end and there it was - a very gratifying 3-0 victory..

Glenn just can't stop banging them in, now he has some support up front. Why did we waste so much time not sensibly utilising his talents?

Even the Derby manager, Son of Brian, not always known for his generous pronouncements, said we were certainly the best side they had played.

And long may it continue.

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