Crystal Palace 3-0 Barnsley

Absolutely shoddy. No hope if we continue to defend like that. It's not like Palace were far superior, it was just the poor, individual errors that let us down tonight and the constant inability to win, or even score away from home is beginning to get worrying.

Simon Davey, fresh from a morning appearance on Soccer AM, brought Bobby Hassell in for the suspended Darren Moore and pushed Foster across to centre-back. Martin Devaney retained his place and Hugo Colace was kept on the bench with Diego Leon carrying on in central midfield.

The Reds did start relatively brightly with a couple of dangerous looking runs from Jamal Campbell-Ryce, fresh from an international double header and a flight half way around the world. Iain Hume worked and worked as well to no avail with some bizarre refereeing decisions.

Crystal Palace were dominant in midfield, due to the absolutely shocking performance of the usually so reliable Anderson de Silva. Tonight, passes went astray, tackles were mistimed, and he lost the ball frequently whilst in control. His night of misery was typified by his shot in the second half that he put about half a mile over the bar.

To be fair to the Reds, they only looked in any real danger when the ball was in the hands of Palace keeper Julian Speroni. His ridiculously good kicks caught the Reds out on more than one occasion and that was to be the undoing for the first goal.

A Reds corner fell to Rigters who headed straight at Speroni, the Palace keeper then decided to launch the ball 70 yards towards an absolute thorn in Barnsley's side all night Victor Moses.

He appeared to be chasing a lost cause but a shocking back header by JCR gave Moses a clear run on Muller and as the striker went wide, Muller charged out and brought him down.

Muller was booked, and Ben Watson slotted the penalty away with ease.

Bobby Hassell looked very good coming back into the side and made a few crucial tackles but couldn't do much about Palace's second on the hour mark.

The Reds had begun the second half encouragingly but just tried too much fancy Dan stuff and never really looked like scoring. If someone decides to have a shot once in a while, then we might score more goals instead of trying to pass the ball into the net.

Nick Carle got to the by-line, being shielded by Anderson who just stood and watched Carle play the ball across the box to the unmarked Ben Watson who easily converted past the isolated Muller.

The Reds misery was taken to the next stage when player of the night Bobby Hassell was forced off injured. He was replaced by Marciano van Homoet, playing his first game since being sent off against QPR on the opening day.

Victor Moses showed his class again by wriggling past van Homoet and putting the ball across to Clint Hill, who diverted his shot towards goal but Muller showed why he is a good keeper by pulling off a fine reaction save.

Another Speroni kick undid the Reds on 82 when he launched it towards sub Shefki Kuqi who got on the end of the ball after Foster missed the header and lobbed the onrushing Muller to put a gloss on Palace's performance.

An encouraging sign for the Reds was the performance of Kayode Odejayi. He looked good winning the headers when he came on, but unless you can start sticking the ball in the net, the jury is still out I'm afraid Kay.

All in all, not dreadful, but not good either. The fact that two Palace goals stemmed from long kicks by Speroni and one from a poor piece of defending is a tonic, at least we're not being outplayed.

Sheffield Wednesday come to town on Tuesday night, two days after the Steel City derby. We'll never get a better chance of beating them, and if we don't, I'm afraid I fear for Mr. Davey's future.

Player Ratings

Heinz Muller: Handled very well, distribution could be better and one or two shaky moments including giving the penalty away tips his rating down a bit. Made one good save from Hill though. 6

Bobby Hassell: Looked good to me, just a shame injury curtailed his night. On that performance would keep Moore out of the team, but he picked an injury up so that may mean big Darren could be back in… subbed. 8

Stephen Foster: The skipper looked OK. Won a lot of headers in the oppositions area, but was out of place for Palace's third. 6

Dennis Souza: Looked pretty good, won almost all his headers and looked assured. 7

Rob Kozluk: Unspectacular but did his job well. 7

Martin Devaney: This boy crosses such a good ball and that showed tonight but I would like to see him come inside a lot more and get some shots in. 6

Anderson de Silva: Really poor from the Brazilian tonight. Don't know what happened, his passing, tackling and running with the ball were awful. I know he's been out of the game for 7 months but we expect better than that from him of all people! 4

Diego Leon: Looked like the only Reds player who was going to make something happen, then he was taken off at 2-0 - bizarre. Subbed, 7

Jamal Campbell-Ryce: Nowhere near his flying best but did make some dangerous runs and put Palace in trouble on a few occasions. 6.5

Iain Hume: Worked and worked with no reward. Didn't look like scoring, but that's one thing with Hume, he'll never give up no matter what the score is. 7

Maceo Rigters: Thought he did alright and did have a couple of opportunities he could have done better with, a goal should boost his confidence a bit. Subbed, 6

Subs:

Marciano van Homoet (for Hassell 66): Steady and unspectacular. 6

Jon Macken (for Leon 67): Didn't offer much, if only he could've repeated his first touch goal trick against Donny, might have been a different story. 5