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27th Feb 2017

Crystal Palace fans try to vandalise opponents’ team bus, make absolute fools of themselves

How embarrassing.

Darragh Murphy

Is “epic fail” still a term?

It would be pretty difficult to come up with an expression more fitting for the behaviour of a group of Crystal Palace fans at the weekend who felt it appropriate to declare their allegiances to the Eagles by defacing Middlesbrough’s team bus.

Palace claimed a 1-0 victory over Aitor Karanka’s side on Saturday but their fans scored an own goal of epic proportions before a ball was kicked at Selhurst Park.

On Friday evening, vandals who claim to be Palace “supporters” took a can of spraypaint to Boro’s bus and decorated it with ‘Crystal Palace FC’.

There would have been giggles of joy and proud high-fives among the group as they made their way away from the coach, satisfied that they had got one over on their relegation rivals.

But, in an absolutely hilarious twist of fate, it turns out that the fans in question had actually defaced their club’s own property as Middlesbrough borrowed the bus from the London side for the weekend’s game.

Twitter user Rich Cook pointed out that Middlesbrough decided to fly to the capital and were allowed to use a Palace bus to travel to and from the stadium on Saturday.

The damage to the bus amounted to roughly £40,000 and Palace confirmed the incident in a statement released to Sun Sport.

“The team bus was covered in graffiti with the words ‘Crystal Palace’ overnight on Friday ahead of the game on Saturday. Police have been informed,” a spokesman said.

Football is just brilliant sometimes, isn’t it?