December 23 2006

Mark Hudson

Palace won a dour final game of the year at home with a 1-0 win over Sunderland at a freezing and foggy Selhurst Park, writes Simon Pophale.

Paraphrasing Peter Taylor before todays game: “we will need to have a good Christmas if we are going to make the play-offs”.

Sitting in 18th place, it is hard to imagine us making a run for the playoffs, although we have done it before…

Taylor rang the changes before the game, bringing back Danny Butterfield and Gary Borrowdale, while adding Carl Fletcher to the midfield. Out went Danny Granville, Matt Lawrence and Ben Watson.

We made our own contribution as the Fanatics brought flags to add to the atmosphere and to show a worldwide audience that we meant business.

The first half started slowly. Daryl Murphy gave Danny Butterfield a difficult 1st game back after injury as a lot of Sunderlands good work came down the right hand side.

Other than a few long range efforts, Sunderland carved the first real chance on 14 minutes when David Connelly split the Palace defence with a diagonal ball, but Grant Leadbitters’ shot went harmlessly wide after a one on one with Julian Speroni.

Despite having a few corners, that chance was the closest Sunderland came in the first half. We had only managed a free kick from Mark Kennedy on 11 minutes and Clinton Morrison shot wide after being set up by Kuqi on 24 minutes.

But 5 minutes before half time we took the lead when a long ball from Danny Butterfield was headed down by Shefki Kuqi and Mark Hudson finished with a perfect half volley.

The 2nd half was punctuated by the ever annoying whistle of Lee Probert, who seemed to blow at every minor infraction, usually against the home side. Sunderland were having more of the possession and we were on the back foot for most of the half.

Julian Speroni kept us in the game with a couple of outstanding saves. The first was on 53 minutes when he turned a Graham Kavanagh effort over the bar and he caught another effort from the same player on 66 minutes.

The centre back pairing of Ward and Hudson made last ditch saving tackles, blocks and interceptions as the clock ran down, but they could do nothing with the Stanislav Varga header on 80 minutes, Speroni acrobatically turning it over the bar.

The frustration of the constant flags and whistles finally told on Carl Fletcher, whose angry reaction after yet another decision went in favour of the home side saw him get booked.

It was pleasing to see that although Sunderland pressurised us to the end, the defence stood resolute and we did not look flustered. Hudson was named man of the match (deservedly so) although Speroni could not have been far behind.

We had a good shout for a penalty as sub Dougie Freedman was brought down in the box after he has ghosted past Varga, but as with all the other decisisons, it was waved away. At the final whistle, we celebrated 3 points and Sunderland fans had a long trip home to face empty handed.