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Both teams looked weary following the hectic Bank Holiday weekend of football, and as both sets of fans - the Palace fans in particular - focussed on faces off the field, those on the field struggled to put together anything like a decent football match, which was hardly helped by a pitch that had more bobbles in it than Claire's Accessories. It remains to be seen whether Palace manager Trevor Francis will claim that this was a help or a hindrence to his side.
The first half passed by fairly quickly, thanks to the up-tempo nature of the game. Unfortunately the football was poor, although both sides managed to carve out clear cut opportunities - Stern John bringing an excellent save out of Matt Clarke after being put through by Geoff Horsfield, and Clinton Morrison somehow firing wide when it looked easier to score. Largely though, both sides cancelled one another out, with the defences and goalkeepers undoubtedly coming out on top.
The second half brought with it a few more chances, the majority of which fell to Palace, who found Nico Vaesen to be in sparkling form yet again. His one double save from initially a Danny Granville free kick, and Dougie Freedman's follow-up had to be seen to be believed. Blues went close through a long range effort from John, and a Jeff Kenna free kick which missed the far post by an agonising few inches. Blues seemed content to try and catch Palace on the break, and some lacklustre passing by the home side allowed Blues several opportunities, two of which were wasted by the Hughes' - Bryan and Michael respectively.
Palace did continue to pressurise however, and perhaps had one of their trio of strikers Ade Akinbiyi, Morrison or Freedman been on form, the sub-standard Blues performance may well have been punished. Perhaps also if the Palace fans had watched the action on the pitch, rather than monitoring Steve Bruce's movements for 90 minutes, then that little bit of extra support for their team, as opposed to abuse to our manager may also have helped their cause - not to mention booing your own centre forward.
All in all a satisfactory result for Blues who will just be glad to have got the 'biggest' game of their run-in out of the way. The likes of Michael Hughes, Tom Williams and Curtis Woodhouse just couldn't get themselves into the game, and Horsfield was back to his worst - he must have controlled the ball about twice without giving away a free kick. A friend of mine (Palace fan) who was at the game commented that it was their best performance of recent weeks, whereas it was certainly Blues' poorest over the same period of time, so a point is not as bad as some may suspect - especially with teams around us struggling to win today too.
Richard Barker
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