March 4 2009

Neil Warnock

Another dismal night at Selhurst as Palace lost 0-1 to Wolves. Jamesey squelched along to watch the proceedings.

I know we live in a blame culture society.

Criminals absolve themselves by claiming they were abused as children. Drug addicts blame their parents and upbringing. Child molesters blame their genes. And so on and so forth.

Nobody accepts the consequences of their own failings any more.

But I never in a million years dreamed this mindset would be reiterated time and again by an Eagles manager.

Time after time, after every lost game (rather a lot recently) it was the fault of the referee or linesmen. It's becoming rather a joke now.

Sure enough, after last night's poor performance against Wolverhampton Wanderers, Neil Warnock made his statutory claim that the match-winning penalty wasn't one at all.

No doubt the validity of the penalty award will be debated until the cows come home.

Even without the penalty, we might have got a point from a 0-0 draw as the likelihood of any be-sashed player scoring a goal now seems as remote as Gordon Brown cracking an amusing joke.

The last four games that I personally witnessed (Ipswich, Watford (FA Cup), Blackpool and Wolves) were all lost because we played dull, uninspiring football and, in every case, were beaten by a better team on the day.

You can blame all the bad decisions in the universe on failing to win, but ultimately if you can't play decent football and score goals, you won't take three points.

Apart from all that, it was a filthy night for football, with torrential rain and swirling winds.

The official attendance was given as 14,907 and you can only admire the large contingent of Wolves supporters who braved the atrocious conditions and travelled down from the midlands on such an appalling night.

Still, when you're top of the league, it's much easier to raise some enthusiasm than when you're sinking like a stone towards the relegation area.

I forgot to ask my steward friend what the real attendance but I am inclined to think that, not only absent season card holders but their wives, children and cousins in America must have been included to get to nearly 15,000!

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

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