Birmingham City - 2 (Purse 10. McCarthy 48.)
Crystal Palace - 0
One can only imagine Steve Coppell's fury, and that of the visiting supporters when both the referee and his assistant missed the incident and waved play on. If this could have made any change to the result is purely a matter of conjecture, but it would have been nice to find out!
With just ten minutes gone a free kick to the home side saw Gary Rowett place a well taken kick that Hayden Mullins just managed to keep out, but the ball fell nicely for Darren Purse who made no mistake opening the scoring.
Palace managed to keep up some sort of pressure, but never looked likely to score, and half time arrived without further addition.
The second half required a good start by the side, but it took only three minutes for Jon McCarthy to seal the game by scoring again.
The match produced nothing further and we went home without a point. Performances such as this probably deserve nothing too, and the sooner we are able to inject some "new blood" into the side the better. Considering injuries the side did quite well, but against opposition such as Birmingham we will really have to find a way of dealing with such things.
Colin Pryce
Birmingham City: Ian Bennett, Gary Rowett, Bryan Hughes, David Holdsworth, Jon McCarthy, Martin O'Connor, Dele Adebola (? Haarhoff 90), Eddie Newton (Allan Johnston 60), Darren Purse, Michael Johnson, Andy Johnson (Graham Hyde 74).
Substitutes not used: Jerry Gill, Kevin Poole.
Crystal Palace: Fraser Digby, Jamie Smith, Dean Austin, Hayden Mullins, Fan Zhiyi (David Woozley 31), Jamie Fullarton, Matthias Svensson, Andy Linighan, Wayne Carlisle, Simon Rodger, Fernando Der Ornelas.
Substitutes not used: Andrew Frampton, Chris Sharpling, Steve Thomson, Matthew Gregg.
Attendance: 21,582
Referee: Mr R. Furnandiz (Doncaster).