GEORGE Burley believes the hard-fought nature of Crystal Palace's opening two games of the season contributed to the Eagles' lacklustre display against Barnsley last Saturday.

Having started the campaign brightly with narrow wins at home to Leicester (3-2) and away to Yeovil in the Carling Cup (1-0), Palace looked subdued in the opening 45 minutes at Oakwell and it eventually cost them the game as they failed to recover from skipper Paddy McCarthy's 35th-minute own goal.

Burley admitted that the Eagles had been "poor" in the first half against the Tykes and although he recognised an improvement after the break, the Palace boss accepted his side had deserved their defeat.

"I thought we never got going at all in the first half. We've had two games where some of the players have played at full stretch and I thought it showed. The Championship's a tough league," he said.

"It was a poor first half but second half I think we lifted it and we had some half chances to get back into the game. In the first half we needed to get the ball down and pass it to influence the game.

"There was nothing in the game and then suddenly an own goal puts them in front. Paddy sticks out a leg and it goes in, but you can't blame him for that."

McCarthy's misfortune was the sole incident of note in a drab first half in which Barnsley enjoyed greater possession, but lacked conviction in the final third, while Palace simply looked disjointed and second best.

Appropriately it was a mistake which yielded the goal. Nathaniel Clyne was drawn out of his right-back slot to contest a tackle – which he lost – and Barnsley's Jay McEveley surged into the vacant space before sending in a firm low cross that was prodded past Julian Speroni at the near post by a sliding McCarthy.

Burley replaced Kieron Cadogan with Neil Danns at half-time and it certainly gave Palace more attacking thrust in the second half.

But for all the probing of Danns and the lively Wilfried Zaha, Palace failed to force the Tykes' keeper Luke Steele into a save.

"We had a lot of shots but didn't get them on target," Burley said.

"Darren Ambrose had four or five and you couldn't find a better finisher than Darren. Unfortunately today it wasn't the case, we didn't get the finishing right.

"Overall, we didn't do enough in the first half to get anything out of the game."

Palace, whose defending was often indecisive in the first half, could have been 2-0 down early in the second as Owen Garvan allowed a soft pass to reach Hugo Colace on the edge of the area, but Speroni came to the rescue with an excellent save at the feet of McEveley eight yards out.

Danns and Alan Lee were both narrowly off target for the visitors, who took until nine minutes from time to begin to pose a real threat. Danns might have had a penalty but referee Neil Swarbrick decided Steele had not fouled the midfielder after he beat the Barnsley stopper to a throughball, and Zaha's reward for a determined dribble to the byeline was seeing his driven cross hacked to safety.