Three games, three new midfielders, nine points, and first in the table, but three substitutions was all it took to give a chilling reminder as to how close we are to the bottom-of-the-table terror.





Watching Siggilson (not even bothering looking it up anymore), Davies, and Iwobbi (ditto) come on in the second half was like one of those horror movies. The one where the girl is kidnapped by goons and tortured, escapes, finds a road as the sun is rising, and along comes a car.





“Help!” she screams and the car pulls over and she sobs in relief as she climbs in.





“Where are you headed?” the driver asks. Before she can answer he turns around and you see it's one of the ghouls she escaped from. You know he's taking her right back where she escaped from for some more thrilling “fun.”





Just as I thought we had escaped our midfield torture chamber, slack-jawed Siggurfson was suddenly patrolling the midfield, looking at the empty stadium in wonder? “How did they escape?” And the freak show continued when I looked up to see Iwobi being given his instructions before coming on:





“And you're going to miss a tackle here, here...and there. Over here you'll give the ball away, and then commit a silly foul right...here. Any questions?”





“Yeah...am I doing an OG?”





“Save it. You may need it for the derby.”





And then suddenly Davies was rubbing his hands together and looking at the pitch to plan his own mayhem.





Fortunately, the whistle blew before these three psychos could climb the bell tower to tear our three points off the scoreboard.





NINETY MINUTES PREVIOUSLY





It was a pleasantly cloudy London afternoon. The elderly Italian was driving his prized students to visit Crystal Palace. He pulled over once to allow the lads to get out and work on some deft passing moves. Then in a total moment of showing off they slid the ball over to Calvert-Lewin to one-time it past the goalkeeper. Later on they all wanted to get out again so Richarlelson could score a penalty, using his new “sneak-up-on-the-ball” method.





“You lads have fun, I'll pick you up later,” the elderly maestro said. He roared off in his sports car. An hour later he came upon a gangly trio walking in the same direction he was traveling. One of them was a scruff with a macro-beannie and a skateboard who held out his thumb. The sky darkened, rain began to pour and the maestro thought, “Ah, poor lads,” and pulled over.





They ran to clamber into the car. One of the youths was a black fellow in dreadlocks. He smiled. “Going OURRRR way...?”





The slack-jawed one said, “We won't slow you down.”





“Much,” added the skateboarder, who began chewing his fingernails and spitting them out onto the plush leather upholstry.



