*** The Foxtrot Report *** (Warning: Very long, and should not be read by anyone).

The Foxtrot Report (Warning: extremely long and should not be read by anyone).

CRYSTAL PALACE 4 NORWICH CITY 1

My first trip to an away game v Crystal Palace since the 1998-1999 season, when a Norwich team containing Darren Eadie, Craig Bellamy, Iwan Roberts and Ged Brannan were thoroughly outclassed by a brilliant Palace side featuring Attilio Lombardo, Matt Jansen, Fan Zhiyi and a man who was to become one of my all-time favourite NCFC players, Mathias Svensson.

I got the train to Selhurst, arriving to buy my ticket for this second-tier football league match, which cost THIRTY POUNDS. I looked at the ticket. As part of Crystal Palace?s centenary celebrations, the ticket featured a number of chairmen from the club?s history, with messages for the away fans.

There was a picture of Lord Cuthbert Cuthbert Pilkington-Symthe, head of the East India Co. and Crystal Palace chairman in 1905, saying, ?You, squire, appear to be a gentleman of questionable judgement?. Their Fifties chairman, A. H. Chequer, was pictured saying, ?I believe you to be educationally sub-normal.? Ron Noades was featured from the early nineties, saying ?You see that Nick Leeson? That?s you, that is?. Mark Goldberg declared, ?You?re even worse with your money than I am?, whilst Simon Jordan was pictured simply pointing and laughing.

Anyway, for my THIRTY POUNDS, I got a seat in the Arthur Wait stand, with the sun in my eyes throughout, in a crappy chair with a pillar obstructing much of the pitch.

Last season?s game at Palace was an intense affair, with passions running high amongst both players and supporters. I didn?t go because I was broke and tickets cost THIRTY-FIVE POUNDS, but I have had a year to reflect on that afternoon, and thinking back to it, it was always going to be a desperate, high-octane battle, and looking at it objectively, Palace structured their game in such a way as to get their star striker into the penalty area, and in the cold light of day, perhaps it was a penalty.

Much has changed since then, though, both in terms of the League situation and the playing personnel, and the teams lined up completely differently here:

CRYSTAL PALACE
G?bor Kir?ly; Gary Borrowdale, Emmerson Boyce, Fitz Hall, Darren ?I didn?t want to play for Norwich anyway? Ward; Ben Watson, Jobi McAnuff, Tom Soares, Michael Hughes; Andrew ?cheating diving f**king cheating c*nt who?d sell his own mother to win a penalty? Johnson, Clinton ?I didn?t want to play for Norwich anyway? Morrison.
Subs: Julian Speroni, Mikele Leigertwood, Tony Popovic, Wayne Andrews, Dougie Freedman.

NORWICH CITY
Robert Green; Zeshan Rehman, Adam Drury, Gary Doherty, Craig Fleming; Youssef Safri, Jonatan Johansson, Carl Robinson, Darren Huckerby; Robert Earnshaw, Peter Thorne.
Subs: Paul Gallacher, J?rgen Colin, Dickson Etuhu, Paul McVeigh, Leon McKenzie.

The game kicked off and I thought, ?We?ve lost this.? Robert Earnshaw ? whose resemblance to the aliens that you see on tacky Sky One ?documentaries? about abductions is genuinely disturbing ? looked lively, and might have had a penalty early on if he had played for Palace and his name was Andrew Johnson.

Apart from that, though, Norwich offered absolutely nothing in the entire match. Palace went ahead in the seventh minute, when Comedy Clown Johnson managed not to fall over his big floppy clown feet, instead using them to rifle the ball past the thoroughly pissed-off Robert Green into the far corner, meaning that Nigel Worthington was now unquestionably the biggest clown in the stadium.

Norwich hoofed the ball around for a bit, requiring Green to make a few good saves before Ben Watson smashed home a brilliant second goal on thirty-four minutes. I?d travelled up with a few Palace fans, and they told me Borrowdale, Soares and Watson were their ?Youth Team Players.?

Apparently, this is a process whereby instead of spending extortionate sums of money for lazy, mercenary cast-offs or hard-working but talentless grafters, they find their own players ? sometimes from the local area! ? and try playing them in the team! Apparently they cost nothing ? not even THIRTY POUNDS! It still sounds preposterous to me, though. I?m glad Norwich don?t do that any more, we?re much better off with our intelligent, ambitious and not-at-all parochial or lazy transfer policy.

Youssef Safri ? our one-man midfield ? went off injured just before half-time, leaving us with a no-man midfield, with Worthington clearly distraught at being unable to pick his beloved Andy Hughes. In Hughes? absence, Carl Robinson and Dickson ?work ethic? Etuhu wandering around aimlessly near the centre circle, and the Palace fans laughing heartily at our expense.

I tried to imagine the half-time team talk, where Worthy would make one last desperate attempt to save his job:

WORTHINGTON: Flem! Doc! Hoof it harder! HARDER! And you ? Earnshaw ? you need to work a damn sight harder, notmean? It?s not good being 5?5? and not jumping! Jump! Jump higher! And you, Drury, hoof it at the big one! (Points) THE BIG ONE! THE F**KING BIG ONE! See him?
THORNE: I?m ninety-two years old!

FLEMING: Time to retire, Peter.
THORNE: Pipe down, you young rapscallion!
HUCKERBY: Couldn?t we try ?passing? the ball?
WORTHINGTON: Sit down! Shut up! I?m blaming the pitch for that one, that?s the sit-u-ay-shun. Now get out there and kick that ball as hard as you can!
JOHANSSON: Screw this, I?m going back to Charlton.
WORTHINGTON: Right, THAT?S IT! Get off! GET OFF! McVeigh, you?re on. Right - everyone hoof it at this guy! Paul, get your head out of your hands and get out there!

Worthington?s team talk clearly worked, if his aim was to somehow top an apparently unbeatably crap first-half performance with an even more crap second-half performance, especially if he?d ordered his players to search for hitherto undiscovered areas of ineptitude in a desperate final bid to write himself into the annals of football history.

Clinton Morrison scored somehow, sending the imaginative Palace fans into humour overdrive, launching a volley of brilliant comic Exocets at us, such as ?Worse than the Brighton? and ?Easy? and ?You paid THIRTY POUNDS, you retards.?* Worthington, meanwhile, decided to remove Old Mr. Thorne, much to the relief of absolutely everyone, not least Thorne who, if he runs his fastest, might get to the Post Office to collect his pension by Tuesday morning. On came Leon McKenzie, who was probably distinctly less excited about facing Palace now than he said he was in the match programme.

Fitz Hall scored a farcically easy goal from a corner, with Norwich rectifying their constant Premiership of defending corners with all eleven men by defending the corner without any men at all. Norwich huffed and puffed a bit more, devoid of structure, communication, tactical awareness, passing, tackling, shooting or running.

Pitying us, Iain Dowie ? vying with Earnshaw for Best Star Trek Extra of the afternoon ? brought on Wayne Andrews, hoping to provide us with a bit of comic relief. Conference player Andrews nearly out-clowned Worthington, not least because of his shiny white boots, which ? as all good football fans know ? make a comically bad, would-be showboat player that much funnier. Andrews squared up to one of our defenders and proceeded to make a complete arse of himself by continually trying to skin our slow, inept defensive line, only to fail to beat the first man every single time. Sign him up Nigel, he plays right midfield!

Palace further helped us when Darren Ward ? not our Darren Ward, the good one ? turned an innocuous cross into his own net, the only shot on target towards Kiraly?s goal all afternoon. I received a text from a friend saying ?You?re like a man with no dick at an orgy, you need someone else to score for you.? If it wasn?t for this ?friend? I?d probably have left by that point.

The final whistle finally went, and I thought how lucky we were to have only lost 4-1. 7-0 would have been a much fairer score-line. I have resolved never, EVER to go to Selhurst Park again.*

For what it?s worth, the player ratings:

ROBERT GREEN: 6. Made a few very good saves, and didn?t have much chance with the goals. Did well not to start crouching in one corner of the goal, crying his eyes out and screaming epithets such as ?I used to be an England contender!? or ?You call that bunch of clowns a defence?? or ?You call that a ?wealth of midfielders???

DARREN WARD: 9. Otto?s star man. We tried to sign him over the summer, and he generously showed our team how to score. You may not have signed for us Darren, but you?ll always have a special place in our hearts.

ZESHAN REHMAN: Oh, I don?t know, 2 or something. Does it matter?

The Palace fans were a witless bunch, even at 4-0 up: the only mildly amusing they could come up with ?Why don?t you all sit together?? seeing the seats left empty by those Norwich fans who, bizarrely, didn?t fancy paying THIRTY POUNDS for a match ticket. Otherwise, they recycled Cardiff?s ?magic hat? chant about Peter Thorne in favour of Andrew ?cheat? Johnson ? they can have it, we?re not going to use it.

But there are serious questions, too. Lots of them. How long can the club keep performing like this as soon as they come up against any team that might finish in the top half (particularly away from home)? Why don?t the players look motivated, interested or even fit? Why does Worthington attempt to play 4-2-4 away from home against a top-six side, and then try to play defensive football? How long is it going to take Robert Earnshaw ? who displayed occasional flashes to quality ? to get thoroughly dispirited with the total lack of service? Why don?t the Board act on this? Why don?t we have a specialist right midfielder? What?s a ?midfield?? What are ?youth players?? Why did I pay so much money for this when I knew exactly what was going to happen?

* Not really.

Posted By: Ottosson Foxtrot, Feb 26, 14:29:09