Cardiff hold off Crystal Palace to save point on the road

Lowly Cardiff City survived intense pressure from Crystal Palace to pick up just their second away point of the season with a goalless draw at Selhurst Park on Wednesday.

Palace went into the game on a high after their surprise 3-2 win at champions Manchester City but their luck was out against Neil Warnock's battling side.

Andros Townsend hit the bar in the opening minute from a promising position after good work from Wilfried Zaha and Cheikhou Kouyate.

Luka Milivojevic struck the post with a 77th-minute free kick for Palace, who had 31 shots but only five on target against the Welsh side.

The result left Cardiff one place above the relegation zone in 17th place while Roy Hodgson's Palace are 14th.

"It was very frustrating, not to put at least one of the chances away. If we want to start climbing the table we have to be clinical like we were last week," said Townsend, who scored a stunning volley in Saturday's win at the Etihad.

"Initially you thought it was going to be one of those days, but with the amount of chances we were creating we always knew we'd get another one. We did but we couldn't put it in.

"In the past we've had problems following up good performance with another, and we did do well today, but we just couldn't put the ball away," he said.

Warnock, whose team suffered a 5-1 home loss to Manchester United in their last outing, denied that his team had taken a negative approach to the game.

"We didn't try to shut the shop up, towards the end we were trying to get a winner.

"We tried to limit them and we did. We stayed strong and on another day we could have got all three points," he said.