We looked slow out of the traps

“Our first half display was excellent as we dominated possession and had a load of chances but the second half saw us a little bit more indecisive but we did the job and it was great to see Dougie Freedman get the goal at the end.

“We were looking for a quick start after our disappointment from the midweek match and that we did. I wouldn’t say it was a top performance, but it is 2-0, a clean sheet and a convincing win. I think Clinton Morrison was magnificent and the outstanding player on the pitch, I thought he was excellent and he set up the second as we looked to kill the game off.

“Once we got that second goal it was good to complete the job with a clean sheet and apart from a couple of efforts from Ade Akinbiyi we kept the ball comfortably and were never really under any pressure.”

Steve Cotterill didn’t think it was the greatest of games and just as Dowie was happier with the first half performance from Palace, he was happiest with our second half showing.

“I thought it was a bit of a non event overall, not a lot happened in the game,” he said. “We were too deep in the first half and didn’t get enough pressure on the ball high enough up the pitch. We were better in the second half and at 1-0 we had a couple of great opportunities to equalise and we had a grip on the game.

“The Palace crowd were starting to get edgy and we thought we had a sniff of getting back into the game, but it wasn’t to be unfortunately.”

Steve looked at our recent schedule of two games per week and added, “Their keeper made a good save from Jon Harley’s free kick and had that gone in it may have been a different game but whenever we have a lot of Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday schedules whoever gets the first goal can often go on and win.

“We looked slow out of the traps and we did at Leicester yet for the majority of this season we have started well. We’ve had some unbelievable matches really, with Ipswich, Wolves, Leeds, Leicester and Palace, all of whom have been in the Premiership in the last few years.

“We always knew this period would be tough for us with these five fixtures and to be fair we have had good results from three of them. We’ve just got to carry on and move on from here.”