Bruce survives Palace abuse

Crystal Palace 0 Birmingham City

The match involving play-off contenders at Selhurst Park yesterday was a side-show to the main event which was the public vilification of Steve Bruce. From the moment he stepped off Birmingham City's coach 75 minutes before the start to be welcomed by a hail of missiles which were, thankfully, nothing more serious than empty plastic bottles, the visiting manager suffered an afternoon of acute discomfort.

Crystal Palace fans have not forgotten Bruce's acrimonious departure five months ago for the hot seat at St Andrew's, which must have felt positively scalding with treatment he was to receive on his return to south London.

Bruce was booed when he emerged from the tunnel before the start and every time he stepped out of the dug-out to give instructions to his players there were similar rounds of abuse. "Stand up, if you hate Steve Bruce,'' was one of the more polite refrains from the Palace crowd.

Bruce declined to discuss a traumatic day. Trevor Francis, the Palace manager who had swapped jobs with Bruce in November, claimed not to have heard the various chants and comments. Contradicting himself, Francis said that he thought the abuse was for him. "It's when you get it from behind, from the director's box, that you have to worry,'' he added.

Ade Akinbiyi was the one player who stood most to benefit from the situation. Normally the Palace striker is public enemy number one with his own supporters, who love to ridicule his efforts, but four minutes after the £2.5m signing had had a header cleared off the line by Michael Hughes, he was even forgiven his sluggishness that prevented him from reaching Dean Austin's perceptive through ball before Michael Johnson.

Birmingham, unbeaten now in seven games and initially resembling the side that Palace were when Bruce left, had the better of the first half. Stern John and Geoff Horsfield scorned chances that they made for each other, but they barely troubled Palace's second-choice goalkeeper Cedric Carasso thereafter.

The Frenchman, who had come on for his debut at half- time after Matt Clarke had suffered double vision, watched from afar as Palace dominated the subsequent proceedings, revealing a potent new threat in Danny Granville. His free-kicks became increasingly more difficult for Nico Vaesen. The Belgian goalkeeper plunged full length to claw out the best one in the 84th minute and responded quickly enough to deny Dougie Freedman from the follow-up. With that Palace fans virtually resigned themselves to being deprived of the victory they could crow about ever more at Bruce's expense.

Crystal Palace (3-4-1-2): Clarke (Carasso, h-t); Austin, Mullins, Murphy (Gray, 72); Fleming, Riihilahti, Thomson, Granville; Freedman (Black, 84); Morrison, Akinbiyi. Substitutes not used: Roger, Kirovski.

Birmingham City: Vaesen; Kenna, Tebily, M Johnson, Williams (Lazaridis, 55); D Johnson, B Hughes (Devlin, 84), M Hughes, Woodhouse; John Horsfield (Mooney, 76). Substitutes not used: Bennet (gk), Eaden.

Referee: S Baines (Chesterfield).