Tranmere Rovers - 3 (Jones L 31. Allen 45. Taylor 69.)
Crystal Palace - 1 (Bradbury 39.)

Considering that the home fixture against Tranmere Rovers was played only a few weeks ago, when the visitors managed to take a point off of us, all Palace eyes were on this match to see what the differences might be following the changes to both management and staff. That the differences were not good, was only to be expected, but to continually lose away matches, especially to those teams below us in the table, is really not good enough, and it looks as though Steve Coppell will have his work cut out in the future.

The crowd for this match was a very poor 6000+, and though I can understand that not too many of our supporters would make the long trip north it reflects poorly on our opposition, unless they think that it is not worth turning out to watch us play!

The match got underway, and not many minutes had passed before a major blow was dealt us. David Tuttle received a facial injury, and had to be substituted at the six minute mark, Jamie Smith ably taking his place. From this point on though, the home team made all the running, and it would have been fairly obvious to those hardy souls who did make the trip that this was really not going to be our day. The fact that Tranmere were playing three strikers and we had gone in with five defenders was not really helping our cause either. It was to our credit that we managed to hold on to the game for the first half hour. Things turned sour for Palace when a good cross from Alan Mahon found Lee Jones unmarked in the area, and he duly headed the ball home past a stranded Kevin Miller. It was surprising, considering the play that had been witnessed so far that Palace did not let the game go at this early stage. A few minutes after the opening goal good work from Clinton Morrison found Lee Bradbury on the spot, and he was able to repeat the earlier Tranmere move and headed the ball past Danny Coyne in goal. The match continued with little goalmouth action, and it looked for just a moment that we may well go into the half time break even on the scoreboard. That it was not to be is fairly typical of the way things have been running for us at the moment. 45 minutes was up on the clock, and we were into injury time when a good ball was put through by Liam O'Brien and Graham Allen took the shot. For a moment we appeared safe, but the ball took the deflection off the post and went into the back of the net.

So, we went to the break 2-1 down. One can imagine that Steve was not real impressed, but whatever he said during the break obviously did not have the desired effect, as the match gradually went from bad to worse in the second half.

We managed to hold our own for quite a while during the second stanza of play but there was really no goalmouth action at either end. With almost 25 minutes gone of the second half the play was: Dave Challinor took a long throw in, the ball was headed onwards by George Santos, and yet another header finished in the back of the goal when Scott Taylor finished the move. With a 3-1 deficit we were never going to get back into the game, but damage limitation saw the score get no further away from us. It is fairly obvious that Steve is going to have his work cut out to turn things around for the side. With players missing for next week our home form will be really tested by the visit of Birmingham.

Colin Pryce

Tranmere Rovers: Danny Coyne, Graham Allen, Andy Parkinson (Gary Jones 82), John McGreal, Dave Challinor, Kenny Irons, Alan Mahon, George Santos, Liam O'Brien (Jason Koumas 75), Scott Taylor, Lee Jones.
Not Used: Alan Morgan.

Crystal Palace: Kevin Miller, Sagi Burton, Sun Jihai, Jamie Fullarton, Craig Moore, Dave Tuttle (Jamie Smith 6), Craig Foster Hayden Mullins 67), Fan Zhiyi, Lee Bradbury, Clinton Morrison, Simon Rodger (Leon McKenzie 46).
Not Used: None.

Attendance: 6,017
Referee: Mr J A Kirkby (Sheffield).