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April 26 2024 4.22pm

Wolves 4 - 0 Palace

Sat Mar 1 2003 - League

Crystal Palace suffered their worst defeat of the season with a 4-0 hammering away to Wolves.

They were dealt a blow as early as the 13th minute when Andy Johnson had to come off injured and was replaced by former Wolves striker Ade Akinbiyi.

Match Stats

Ground: Molineux (Attendance: 26010)

Wolves: Murray, Irwin, Lescott, Butler, Naylor, Newton (Sturridge, 62), Ince, Cameron (Rae, 86), Kennedy, Miller, Ndah (Proudlock, 8)

Subs not used: Oakes, Clyde

Goals: Miller 40, Sturridge 77, Miller 83, Miller 90 (pen)

Palace: Berthelin, Symons, Powell, Popovic, Butterfield, Mullins, Derry, Riihilahti (Routledge, 25), Gray, Johnson (Akinbiyi, 15), Adebola (Black, 64)

Subs not used: Kolinko, Granville

Referee: J P Robinson (Hull)

Wolves had two opportunities to score - Kenny Miller shot wide after 18 minutes and Colin Cameron volleyed over the bar shortly afterwards.

After 25 minutes, Trevor Francis made his second substitution of the game, bringing on starlet Wayne Routledge for Aki Riihilahti.

Akinbiyi headed over the bar from Shaun Derry's corner on 32 minutes and a couple of minutes later, Dele Adebola fired wide. Denis Irwin then had a curling free-kick wide of Cedric Berthelin's goal.

Five minutes before the interval, Miller broke the deadlock for Wolves. Adam Proudlock's low cross from the right went as far as Mark Kennedy who put the ball back in the danger area and Miller slotted home from close range.

Worse was to follow in the second half. In the 77th minute, Dean Sturridge netted from Kennedy's cross to make it two-nil.

Six minutes later, Miller added his second when he got on the end of Cameron's throughball and fired home.

He completed his hat-trick when he was fouled by Darren Powell in the box and picked himself up to score the spotkick to complete a miserbale day for Palace.

Post match comments:

Trevor Francis said: "I'm disappointed with our lack of reaction after the second goal went in. We have moulded a squad high on energy and with a lot of togetherness but we have lost our way.

"We accepted the inevitable and a number of players didn't show any willingness to respond and that's quite disturbing.


That's our worst defeat of the season and our worst performance
Trevor Francis

"We are suffering a reaction to going out of the FA Cup and we were a rag-bag outfit at the end. That's our worst defeat of the season and our worst performance."

"Andy Johnson is essential to the way we want to play, he was sadly missed when he had to leave the field but that shouldn't be used as an excuse.

"We did have certain periods where we held posession for good periods but we showed ineffectiveness in front of goal.

"Some players started looking fit but finished looking unable to put one foot in front of another.

"There were a couple of players who returned today and were clearly not 100 per cent fit but they had to soilder on in the closing stages of the game against a very good side."

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