Canaries caged on the road

Crystal Palace 2 Norwich City

It is the last episode tomorrow night of the present series on Norwich's favourite fictional son Alan Partridge. Back in the real world, however, this latest defeat for the city's football team is unlikely to be the last word on their woes when they venture outside Norfolk.

This was the Canaries' fifth consecutive away loss, a run that is seriously harming their prospects of remaining in the play-off places, but their manager, Nigel Worthington, refused to admit it was looming large in his players' minds.

He said: "The away run is not affecting the players mentally. We'll just keep working at it. There's a fine line in football and we've just slipped in a few games."

The omens were not good for Norwich before this game because Selhurst Park has not been a happy hunting ground for Norwich in rec- ent seasons. Indeed, last month they lost 4-2 against the Selhurst Park tenants Wimbledon.

That match saw the visitors three goals down at half-time and playing abjectly. Their performance here was only slightly better and their reward at the interval was to be two goals behind.

At home, Norwich are a tidy, compact and confident side, but on their travels they take on the appearance of 11 strangers playing together for the first time. All the more baffling is that Norwich occupied fourth place in the First Division before kick-off while Palace were situated exactly half way up the table.

Palace, who lost their centre-back Tony Popovic to an early injury, scored with their first genuine attack of the game after just six minutes. Aki Riihilahti's tenacity won the ball back near the touchline and he found Tommy Black. The midfielder weaved his way into the area before squaring for a half-fit Dele Adebola, who stroked his shot home.

Norwich's goalkeeper Robert Green was granted a reprieve by the referee after 22 minutes when he handled outside the box, the official giving Green the benefit of the doubt. He was not so lucky five minutes later when Danny Granville swung in a deep cross from the left and Black jumped highest to head home.

The Crystal Palace manager, Trevor Francis, who once had Worthington under him as a player at Sheffield Wednesday, saw his side completely snuff out any possible threat from the Canaries and was rightly pleased with the outcome.

"It was a comfortable victory but that is credit to the way we defended," he said. "I know we can score but that we also have some good defenders, so at 2-0 I thought there was a good chance we could win."