A shambolic Monday night at Selhurst saw Palace slump to a disastrous 3-1 defeat against Sunderland which has well and truly amplified Palace’s label of ‘relegation fodder’.

The tone was set in the first half during an excruciatingly poor spectacle by both sides, which displayed football you would expect in the pits of Sunday league pub football, not to mention the fact it was played on a surface that would be deemed poor even at that level. The installation of the undersoil heating has resulted in the pitch being a long way off the immaculate standards the fans had been taking for granted in prior seasons. The soil cuts up and it leaves your heart in your mouth every time the defenders bobble the ball back to Julian Speroni after an over-intricate passage of play at the back.

Saying that, during the first half it wouldn’t have mattered if Palace playing on grass or sand given the amount of times they aimlessly lumped the ball to Marouane Chamakh or the lifeless Fraizer Campbell. The direness of the first half was epitomised in the 38th minute when the Holmesdale Fanatics started scrapping with the stewards over a protest banner they had so proudly displayed. The second half was a vast improvement from the first and saw Palace dominate throughout its entirety.

Introducing Wilfried Zaha to the line-up certainly gives the attack whole new level of potency and Palace should have been coasting come the final whistle. While our wingers are scintillating and destructive when taking on the full-backs, the final ball throughout the game was painfully wasteful, not to mention the deliveries from out set pieces. The stadium was then stunned as Sunderland ventured into Palace’s half for the first time in the second period and with the help of Joel Ward’s extraordinary miscue, we found themselves a goal down again.

Palace even gifted them their third as Jason Puncheon was at fault in consecutive games to hand Sunderland the sealing goal which led to a flood of exits around the stadium. We have been on the wrong end of an agonising sequence of terrible refereeing decisions and you can’t help but think this is not helped by a certain Neil Warnock in the dugout.

It would be too easy to say that they were just ‘unlucky’ against Sunderland and were victims of the appalling gamesmanship us Palace fans have grown accustomed to by a team lead by Gus Poyet in a game we dominated. Palace should have picked up six points from their last two matches but instead find themselves with just one. While there have been many positive performances in matches against the likes of Everton, Leicester, West Brom and Chelsea, we simply aren’t picking up enough points.

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The fact of the matter is we miss our old defensive organisation, we leak too many goals and it will eventually cost us. Two clean sheets in 10 games isn’t enough to survive, not to mention the fact we have lost our home dominance having won just one game at Selhurst all season. Warnock needs to work hard on our defence and needs to fathom a way he can manipulate the referees clear biased in decisions against his club.

However, contradictorily, we have put in more than enough good performances under Warnock to show we can compete in this league. But until we get the rub of the green, we will continue to be disrupted and the only way I can see us getting our luck back is if we ditch the officials’ scapegoat Warnock.

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