Palace's Matt Jansen in action (Photopress)

Crystal Palace 2 Bristol City 1

Saturday's last-gasp win against Bristol City will be remembered as a tale of two players, writes Carl Gunaratnam.

While Eagles saviour Matt Jansen stole two points in the dying minutes to play fairy god mother to the Palace faithful, his teamate Dean Austin is fast becoming the villain of the story at Selhurst.

With his silky skills and eye for goals, the 21- year-old Jansen is undoubtedly leading the popularity stakes with Palace's Euro stars - Yugoslav Sasa Curcic and Italian maestro Attilio Lombardo.

Unfortunately every good story needs a villain and Austin, the ex-Tottenham right-back, is in danger of monopolising the Eagles' bad guy role. The 28-year-old's Palace career has never been the most comfortable, but has nose-dived lately. A leading figure in a shaky defence costing the Eagles priceless points this season, Austin has already been bearing much of the fans' anger. At least until Saturday it was only groans and muted derision which followed each mistake. The weekend's events marked what could be the point of no return. After a nervy start, the 17,821 crowd lost their patience with the ex-England U21 player and almost to a man booed his every touch.

The withdrawal of the ex-Spurs man meant he was not on the pitch to see starlet Matt Jansen's 89th minute winner although he did see Lee Bradbury score his first goal for the club.

In shock news, Palace revealed on Tuesday that Clinton Morrison and Marcus Bent are on stand-by to partner Bradbury for Saturday's trip to Swindon after Jansen underwent surgery for a knee injury on Monday. The Eagle's star picked up the knock minutes before heading Palace's winner against Bristol City and is set to be out for weeks after missing last night's England Under-21 match with the Czech Republic.

Matt Svensson is back in rehabilitation training this week but the 24 year-old is still facing a lengthy lay-off after fracturing an ankle in Palace's bad tempered 3-2 victory over Wolves.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.