Palace's euro scheming

Crystal Palace's players have negotiated a bonus scheme for getting into Europe.

Iain Dowie's team may be among the favourites for relegation but they are filled with self-belief after their surprise promotion last season. They managed a 1-1 draw at Norwich on Saturday with last term's top scorer Andy Johnson picking up where he left off.

He scored with a neat finish 17 minutes from time to cancel out Darren Huckerby's opener and Dowie has told the Palace players to ignore the doom-mongers.

Defender Danny Granville said: "Our main aim is to survive, consolidate and go from there. We want to copy teams like Charlton, Birmingham and Bolton and defy the odds by staying up.

"But when we were renegotiating the bonus system after winning promotion, we decided to build one in for Europe, just in case we end up in the UEFA Cup.

"Dowie has gained the utmost respect of all the boys. He gets the best out of us and I suppose after what we've been through we believe that just about anything is possible."