Swindon Town - 2 (Ndah 23. Walters 46.)
Crystal Palace - 0

Another away game, and yet another loss! Surely it is about time that our away form started to match our home form. Still, I guess as long as it does not happen the other way around, with our home form dipping to meet the away form, then we shall just have to be happy and wait for our fortunes to change. To really add insult to injury it was yet again an ex-Palace player that scored against us.

With Swindon under new management, which appears to be yielding some success, George Ndah started on the bench, but after not too many minutes he was on the field of play, replacing the injured Ty Gooden. A free kick taken by Mark Walters was met by Ndah outjumping the defence to glance the ball home. Funnily enough it should have been Palace that took the lead at the ten minute mark when Lee Bradbury slotted the ball home only to be adjudged offside. So it was 1-0 to the home side less than half way through the first period, and we really should have been level only minutes later when Clinton Morrison (replacing the injured Matt Jansen) saw his header go fractionally wide.

The second half started poorly for Palace when Jason Crowe was deemed to have brought down Walters, who promptly picked himself up to take the penalty to make the score 2-0. Morrison came close once again, and only a spectacular save by Frank Talia denied Bradbury. To be fair Neale Fenn almost made it 3-0, but his shot went into the side netting. The final passages of play all belonged to Palace.

Chances to Marcus Bent, Gordan Petric and Bradbury all came to naught, as did what looked like a perfectly legitimate appeal for a penalty. So the search goes on for just our second away win of the season, our only result being against bottom placed Crewe Alexander. That Terry Venables was unimpressed is probably a minor understatement.

Colin Pryce

Swindon Town: Talia, Robinson, Hall, Davis, Willis, Borrows, Walters, Watson (Bullock 79), Onuora, Fenn (Taylor 89), Gooden (Ndah 11)
Not Used: None.

Crystal Palace: Digby, Burton (Tuttle 17), Crowe, Petric, Moore, Foster, Lombardo (Curcic 60), Rizzo (Bent 69), Bradbury, Morrison, Mullins.
Not Used: None.

Attendance: 11,718
Referee: Mr T. Leake (Darwen).