April 17 2011

Nathaniel Clyne was outstandingly good

Jamesey rolls his eyes and bangs his forehead with the flat of his hand as Palace lose a crucial game against fellow strugglers, Scunthorpe.

Really we all should have known it.

Scunthorpe hadn't won an away game in 10 on the trot. Palace hadn't lost at Selhurst since last October.

Feed those two facts into the computer and press "enter". You guessed. The Eagles stuttered and managed to lose an absolutely crucial game 1-2 (April 16).

When the chips were really down and losing the game could help Palace down to the third division, the team blew it big time...

An official crowd of 17,810 turned up on a balmy day, including a sizeable contingent of Scunnies, allowing for their league position and the economic travails in that part of the country.

The away contingent made a fair bit of noise, especially after they went two goals up. Chants of "Iron, Iron" reminded this writer of the days when Glanford Park would have been in the middle of an area enjoying a massive and thriving steel industry. Ah, those were the days when England actually made lots of useful things.

Anyhow, in the first half The Iron ran rings around a ponderous Eagles team and the two former jewels in our crown, Darren Ambrose and Neil Danns, still looked out of sorts.

Nathaniel Clyne was outstandingly good in defence and attack and is once again beginning to resemble a player who will go far in the game of football.

Wilfried Zaha and Sean Scannell livened things up in the second period and the latter's superbly taken goal put some long-awaited belief into the Palace ranks.

The Eagles came back strongly and were very close to an equaliser or more a few times. But it was all too late and even the eight minutes injury time couldn't help the cause.

The less said about the eccentric decisions of Mr K Stroud, the referee, the better.

So here we are - four games to go and three points ahead of the bottom trio. It is, of course, not at all impossible for Palace to pick up enough points from the remaining games to preserve division 2 status although you have to question the tactics and will of a team that can't beat Scunthorpe at home.

My two season ticket chums (father and son) who sit next to me and have enthusiastically backed Palace for many years now, told me (somewhat shamefacedly, it must be said) that if we go down they will not be renewing.

I don't hold that against them although I am beginning to get rather lonely these days as deaths and defections thin the body of people I know in the immediate vicinity.

They have a right to spend their money how they choose and if they don't consider that third division football is worth stumping up good money for, so be it.

I only hope, for the sake of CPFC 2010, and the club as a whole, that, in the worst-case scenario, too many others don't come to the same conclusion.

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

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