CHRIS LAKEY Norwich City put the brakes on one of the Championship's in-form teams yesterday - but Glenn Roeder was still left wondering what might have been.The Canaries left Crystal Palace, unbeaten in 12 games, with a point after a 1-1 draw, but Glenn Roeder believes it was more like two points dropped.

CHRIS LAKEY

Norwich City put the brakes on one of the Championship's in-form teams yesterday - but Glenn Roeder was still left wondering what might have been.

The Canaries left Crystal Palace, unbeaten in 12 games, with a point after a 1-1 draw, but Glenn Roeder believes it was more like two points dropped.

The festive season has ended with a haul of three points from their last three games, but the City boss is convinced it should have been more like seven - which would have put them in a considerably safer position than the 20th spot they still occupy.

“The Christmas period? Disappointed about Charlton - that should have been a win - and today could easily have been a win. As for Wolverhampton - we were very pleased to take a point,” was Roeder's assessment.

“So I'm a little bit disappointed we haven't collected more points, but it keeps an unbeaten run going and of course they are gaining in confidence and belief all the time and coming here today will only add to that confidence. It shows how we have raised expectation levels.”

Palace under Neil Warnock have been transformed, but yesterday were often transfixed as City gave them the run-around at times, particularly in the opening half.

Darel Russell had given City the lead on nine minutes only for the in-form Clinton Morrison - a player Roeder tried to bring to Carrow Road on loan two months ago - to take advantage of sloppy defending from a free-kick to snatch a point for Palace after the break.

“If you concede from set plays they are cheap goals,” Roeder said. “We did a lot of work in terms of looking at the video evidence of Crystal Palace and how many goals they have scored from set plays and it is phenomenal and we got caught out on a set play which is disappointing. Generally speaking we dealt with them very well. We dealt with them all bar one and it has cost us, but conceding one here it still shouldn't have meant we only took a point.

“After the game I had to pick them up a little bit. They were that disappointed, coming here today and only taking a point.

“Two months ago they would have been jumping up and down as if they'd won the Cup down here.

“They are on a fantastic run, the form team in the division - having said that we would be third in that table so we are the two form teams who played each other. But no one will change my mind that we were the better team throughout and played some really good football as well. When you consider the position we are in in the table to have the confidence to shift the ball around in the manner we did I was pleased.

“There was some good goalkeeping and we needed to be a bit tighter with our finishing and then we would have won the game deservedly. Nevertheless there will be plenty of teams that come here and get beat. Not only did we not get beat we looked the better team.”