Palace 2 - 3 Blackburn Rovers

Friday December 22 2000 - League

Crystal Palace's unbeaten run of 12 games has come to end tonight as Blackburn won 3-2 at Selhurst Park.

Fan Zhiyi was sent off early in the match and Blackburn cruised to a 3-0 half time lead.

After the break Mikael Forssell and Hayden Mullins replied for the Eagles but it didn't prove to be enough.

Palace had a false start to the game as Fan got sent off after bringing down Hughes who had broken through the Palace defence.

The referee also awarded a penalty, even though the tackle appeared to have been made outside the box. David Dunn made no mistake from the spot.

Only four minutes later, Dunn added a second to his tally when he knocked in a Marcus Bent cross.

Just before the interval Blackburn made it three. The Palace defence failed to clear the ball and Flitcroft passed the ball to the unmarked Martin Taylor who finished clinically.

In the second half, Palace tried to make something of it and it resulted in an early goal by Forssell. The Finn collected a long ball and knocked it in to the bottom corner from 20 yards.

On 63 minutes, Hayden Mullins scored Palace's second when Jason McAteer cleared off the line, but straight to the Palace youngster.

Post match comments

Eagles boss Alan Smith wasn't complaining about losing to Blackburn.

He said: "I don't want to say anything negative about my players. I've been critical when I've had to be but I thought we were outstanding in the second half.

"I'm disappointed that the good run has come to an end but I've no complaints."

About the penalty decision he said: "It wasn't a penalty - the tackle was outside the box."

However, Blackburn boss Souness said: "I've never seen a more obvious penalty. The referee was right up there. It was certainly a sending-off and it looked like a penalty to me.

"But I thought we played very well in the first half and then we didn't play at all in the second. We've won - so now I can have a decent drink on Christmas Day.

"This was a very hard game for us. Palace have gone 12 matches unbeaten. Thirteen is my lucky number, and it turned out that way.

"Our football has been very good the last couple of months and I feel we should have more points than we have - but there's a lot of football still to be played this season. We can still reach our target of second place."

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