It's not a knee jerk, up one week, down the next, reaction - it's having looked at the fixtures. I really thought we needed to bank three points, one at least, from Crystal Palace today. We will play teams much better than Palace, and there are an elite group of about seven that we just can't realistically look to in a relegation battle. Sure the other teams around us have dropped points today, but against clubs who they expect to drop points to - the difference is that we have dropped points against a club that (if we are to stay up) we know we really ought to beat. I wasn't too worried by the Birmingham result - that's a team who we can't expect to take three points off - if we had, you'd call it a bonus (not bread and butter). But I looked at Crystal Palace as being a litmus test today. Let's not make any bones about this - it's a big month where we go from one six point game to the next -we need to bank points this month or we will pay for it (at least six) come the end of the season.</p> It's cold hard logic - if we carry on like this we're dead in the water. Or to put it another way, we're painting ourselves into a corner, and get the other side of the Christmas, we'll need promotion form just to survive.</p> After the week we've had, with very public conjecture between the Chairman and Manager, in the media, 'the who is going to go?' talk and the 'who is to blame?' catfighting - I can't pretend to be surprised that we lost today. The Chairman and the manager have allowed something to get inside the camp that draws the attention away from what needs to be done on the pitch. They need to stop the finger pointing, and get the **** on with the job in hand.</p>