Crystal Palearse 3
Kamada 41, Lerma 45+4, Pino 59
Nottingham Forest 1
Ndoye 3

NONSENSE

Things are not going well, but at least the manager isn't to blame. Of course he isn't. He can't be, because criticising Glasner would be like admitting that another mistake had been made, and that would be a very bad look indeed.

No, the manager isn't to blame, it's the players. Apparently they have become a bunch of clowns who can't score and can't defend. It is difficult to argue with this conclusion after watching Ndoye, Munoz, Delap, Wood and others miss easy chances, and the entire defence behaving like the feeblest of nitwits under pressure.

It's easy to describe how they played, harder to explain why. Perhaps Ndoye still flatters to deceive. Perhaps Delap really is useless. Perhaps Wood never was any good. Perhaps MGW wants to be somewhere else. Perhaps Murillo and Diomande can't play together. Perhaps recruitment was crap. Perhaps it was just one of those days. Perhaps VAR really is bent. Perhaps the lot of them are playing some vast, inscrutable joke on the paying public. Or perhaps a system which involves the whole team attacking with urgency, as opposed to the traditional counter-attacking method, leads to lack of composure at both ends of the pitch.

But wait a minute. Isn't a widespread lack of composure a managerial problem? Of course it isn't. It's just coincidence that under this manager the players' anxiety levels have increased. All this nonsense about the manager being responsible for things like confidence and composure has to stop.

Glasner actually took the blame for the defeat. He suggested that fate had dictated he could not win at Selhurst Park, which was an odd way of dismissing Forest's shortcomings. He also said that the players did everything he asked them to do, which presumably included shooting and defending like arseholes. But these things were not as daft as they might seem. To take managerial responsibility for the wrong reason is like the murderer who admits to a lesser crime as an alibi. We call that clever work, Oliver.

You may be confused. We don't blame you. We too are confused, especially by some of the bollocks spouted by pundits and podcasters in their desperation to avoid talk of crisis at the club, such as "Forest were superb ... yes, I know they were shocking at the front and pretty dire in defence ... but that was the best performance they've put in for a long time."

People are talking nonsense, and it will end badly.