Blackburn Rovers - 2 (Blake 41. Jansen 44.)
Crystal Palace - 0

Considering the recent poor performances on the pitch in lead up games to the season, Alan Smith was clearly relieved to escape from Ewood Park with a scoreline that only read 2-0. That matters could well have been worse was evident from the run of play, but the defence for Palace, lead admirably by Neil Ruddock and Jamie Smith, stood up well to this test. That Blackburn are currently favourites for promotion is fairly obvious following this display, but Alan will not give up on his training regime until such time as things on the field improve. Evidence of this is that come Sunday morning all players will report for training; they will want to notch a win soon, if only to get a well deserved day off! Let's hope the win comes next Sunday against Queens Park Rangers.

This match got underway with Palace fairly content to defend with a 5-man backline, which frustrated the home side for the first 40 minutes of the match. Indeed, Palace saw little of the ball, with Nathan Blake putting in a tame header and Damien Duff seeing his shot deflected on to a post by Ruddock, but then we nearly scored first.

With 32 minutes gone Mikael Forssell centred the ball across the face of goal, but unfortunately no-one was there to get a final touch and steer it into the back of the net. Matt Jansen was getting fairly frustrated, his shots going everywhere but into the net, and our only other chance fell to Clinton Morrison, his shot going wide of the mark.

As we entered the last five minutes of the first half Alan must have been planning his pep talk to give the lads a chance at grabbing all three points in the second half, but those few minutes produced a re-writing of his script. Austin held on to the ball a fraction too long and David Dunn tackled, won the race to the ball and centred a beautiful pass that Nathan Blake crashed against the crossbar. Luck turned against us though, as the ball fell agonisingly inside the line, and a goal was justifiably awarded. As if this was not enough to contend with, three minutes later Dunn again provided a great through ball for Jansen to latch on to. He calmly rounded young custodian Stuart Taylor and effectively put the game beyond Palace's reach with a well-directed shot into the back of the unguarded net.

The second half of play saw at least three distinct chances for the home side inside the first 10 minutes. Duff sent his chance just the wrong side of the post, then Jansen seemed a little unlucky to have a "goal" disallowed when the assistant referee signalled offside against another player. Taylor acquitted himself well with the third chance, making a fine diving save from the increasingly confident Dunn.

At this point though, Blackburn seemed to run out of ideas, and indeed looked somewhat nervous. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking on the part of the Palace supporters, but our team seemed to lift a gear whilst Rovers started to look a little lost. Becoming somewhat careless at the back nearly cost Rovers dearly, Clinton managing to nod the ball down to Mikael, who for once was in the clear. With only Alan Kelly to beat somehow Mikael only managed to send his shot wide when it seemed far easier to simply go round him and pull one back. Perhaps that might have been more than we deserved on the day though?

Our performance seemed to lift once again with the introduction of Tommy Black and Julian Gray, but Blackburn managed to hang on to their lead, giving Graeme Souness a great start to the season, and Palace looking for further improvements on the field of play.

Alan will not be discontent with this performance, but he will be looking for an improvement come next week's matches in both the League and the Cup.

Colin Pryce

Blackburn Rovers: Alan Kelly, John Curtis, Christian Dailly, Jason McAteer, Stig Inge Bjornebye, Craig Short, Garry Flitcroft, David Dunn (Keith Gillespie 76), Damien Duff, Nathan Blake, Matt Jansen.

Substitutes not used: Ashley Ward, Damien Johnson, Martin Taylor, John Filan.

Crystal Palace: Stuart Taylor, Jamie Smith (Tommy Black 80), Jamie Fullarton, Dean Austin, Fan Zhiyi, Neil Ruddock, Hayden Mullins, Clinton Morrison (Wayne Carlisle 75), Mikael Forssell, Jamie Pollock (Julian Gray 78), Craig Harrison.

Substitutes not used: Steve Thomson, Sean Hankin.

Attendance 18,733

Referee: Mr C Wlikes (Gloucester).