CRYSTAL PALACE ALMOST HAD THEIR shortcomings exposed yesterday by a Leeds United team who played most of the match with ten men, but they will not care after Clinton Morrison came off the substitutes’ bench to score an injury-time winner that preserved their 100 per cent record, the last in the Coca-Cola Championship.

Palace had struggled to make their numerical advantage count after the dismissal of Geoff Horsfield for violent conduct in the fifteenth minute of a poor match at Selhurst Park, but they were rewarded for their perseverance rather than the quality of their play, as Peter Taylor, their manager, admitted.

“I don’t think anybody is ever going to play well all the time,” he said. “There are going to be times when you misplace passes and things don’t go right, but the most important thing is that you keep going, and the players kept going and kept believing they could do it.”

Having conceded a late equaliser in a 2-2 draw against Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road last Tuesday, Leeds have now dropped a total of three points during added time in successive games. But although Kevin Blackwell, the Leeds manager, had been enraged by what he described as hari-kiri last week, he was feeling anything but suicidal yesterday.

“I think the lads didn’t get what they deserved, but in life you don’t sometimes,” he said. “I was angry at QPR because we were such a dominant side and should have closed the game out, but today we’ve given everything and, down to ten men, I just thought that some of the decisions that were given against us were dubious.”

The big decision was the dismissal of Horsfield, who is on loan from Sheffield United, after an off-the-ball clash with Mark Hudson. The Palace defender appeared to block the forward’s run and, in remonstrating, Horsfield caught Hudson with a forearm. Hudson fell to the ground and Rob Styles, the referee, produced the red card after consulting Phil Sharp, his assistant.

Sharp’s eyesight must have improved since the World Cup finals, when he failed to notify Graham Poll that he had shown a third yellow card to Josip Simunic during the match between Australia and Croatia. If Sharp’s hearing is up to standard, then comments directed at him by Horsfield on his way back to the dressing-room may figure in Styles’s report.

Even without Horsfield, Leeds made the better chances in the first half. Having won their previous two matches, against Ipswich Town and Southend United, Palace found the going much harder against one of the likely contenders for promotion and were grateful that Eddie Lewis’s volley from a cross by David Healy rebounded clear from the foot of a post.

Leeds also made the second-best chance of the first hour but Shaun Derry, completely unmarked, headed too high. Eventually Palace, with Dougie Freedman bringing his trickery to their attack as a substitute, began to exert more sustained pressure. Leon Cort twice headed wide, and Tony Warner made excellent saves from Mark Kennedy’s long shot and Freedman’s dipping effort.

Just when it seemed that Leeds would hold out, Cort nodded down Kennedy’s cross and Morrison turned Matthew Kilgallon before beating Warner from six yards, inflicting Leeds’s first defeat in London since a 1-0 loss away to Chelsea in May 2004. “On another day Leon Cort would have scored with a couple of headers, but the players kept plugging away,” Taylor, whose return to the club he graced as a player could not have gone much better, said.

Iain Dowie, his predecessor, remains in the Selhurst doghouse, though. Simon Jordan, the chairman, took another swipe in his programme notes at Dowie’s decision to move to Charlton Athletic despite allegedly being released from his contract on the understanding that he would return to be nearer his family in the North West.

“I am many things but I am not a liar and the same cannot be said of my ex-manager,” Jordan wrote. “I am not launching a petty crusade, [but) neither am I allowing the p*** to be taken out of either myself or Palace.”

Their exalted league position, however temporary, means that the club, at least, should be immune from that for a while.

Crystal Palace (4-3-3): G Kiraly — D Butterfield, M Hudson, L Cort, D Granville — B Watson (sub: D Freedman, 46min), C Fletcher, M Kennedy — T Soares (sub: C Morrison, 73), J Scowcroft, J McAnuff. Substitutes not used: S Flinders, M Lawrence, G Borrowdale. Booked: Watson, McAnuff. NEXT Birmingham City (a)

Leeds United (4-4-2): T Warner — G Kelly, M Kilgallon, P Butler, S Crainey — S Stone (sub: S Carole, 90), S Derry, I Westlake, E Lewis (sub: F Richardson, 75) — D Healy (sub: I Moore, 77), G Horsfield. Substitutes not used: S Gregan, R Blake. Booked: Kilgallon, Crainey. Sent off: Horsfield. NEXT Cardiff City (h)

Referee: R Styles. Attendance: 17,218