It's become a minor running joke among some Crystal Palace fans that, after a game in which they concede a goal from a set piece, boss Alan Pardew will proclaim in some bafflement that such a thing is "not us."
He did it in September, after three of the five goals they had let in to that point had been from set pieces. He did it after the 4-2 defeat to Liverpool, in which they allowed two from corners. And he did it again this weekend, after Yaya Toure was left unmarked on the edge of the six-yard box from a corner and sealed a 2-1 win for Manchester City.
This is not necessarily unusual. Managers often misdirect, obfuscate, mislead or sometimes downright lie when talking to the press, and frequently with good reason -- why would you admit and expose a weakness to 19 other competitors?
But Palace have conceded nine goals from dead ball situations this season (nearly half their total), and a whopping 30 chances. Both are the most in the Premier League. Pardew at least recognised the problem and stated his intention to fix it, but at what point does hiding your hand become delusion?
Pardew's apparent certainty that Palace are not a team who concedes from set pieces, despite doing so quite often, fits in with a more general theme of excuses. He has been around for a while, so he knows what he's doing when making public statements. Pardew has mastered the art of ostensibly "fronting up" and admitting mistakes, while at the same time making it clear that his team's problems might well be someone's fault, but certainly not his.
Sometimes it's quite subtle. On Saturday, for example, he praised the collective but criticised the individual, noting Palace had "dealt with [City] quite well tactically," but that they "gifted" the second, winning goal. Translation: I did my job, but someone else messed up.
He blamed "one player" for not passing on a message about their adjusted duties at corners when coming on as substitute. By process of elimination, that player was Lee Chung-Yong, brought on two minutes before City's winner.
"That's unacceptable to me," Pardew solemnly intoned, as if making sure everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing from corners isn't the manager's responsibility.
"We'll have to make sure they wear a t-shirt with the message on it next time."
Something like that is an easy distraction, and would be easier to believe if conceding like that was an isolated incident. But in truth it was Pardew deflecting blame away from himself, choosing to point at a player making a single error (over which the manager can have little control) rather than a collective failure (which the manager is supposed to totally control) for adverse results. Perhaps this is part of Pardew's famously bullet-proof self-regard, but it's also disingenuous.
"It's not like teams are running away from us," he said on Saturday.
"If you look at the five games, the distance and the margins between how we've played and the fact that we've lost all five, is a little bit unusual. I'm hoping in the next five games we get our little slice of luck, get the breaks, get the first goal and suddenly start getting some more points."
Again, Pardew was trying to point towards factors beyond his control -- luck, fate, the gods, whatever -- but Pep Guardiola's side didn't have to play very well to win, and only really looked in trouble for the 10 minutes or so around Palace's goal.
Pardew's tactical adjustment at half time saw Andros Townsend replaced by Connor Wickham, a move that initially worked and Wickham scored, but almost immediately the forward was pushed back out to the wing. Momentum was lost and beyond a couple of late chances, City controlled the game from that point, more or less in third gear.
There was another example of his blame-shifting here, too. "I felt at centre-half they were struggling a little bit today, so he'd give us a bit more power and presence through the middle," Pardew said, when asked about the Wickham substitution.
But then, seconds after declaring that he'd spotted and exploited a weakness, the words still hanging in the air like in a cartoon speech bubble, he said: "I thought Man City's best players were their defenders."
Again, the things that went right -- Wickham taking advantage of defensive "struggles" thanks to his brilliant tactical switch -- were Pardew's doing. But the things that went wrong -- those same defenders suddenly becoming excellent and impenetrable -- were beyond his control.
The defeat wasn't entirely down to Pardew, and there is no disgrace in losing to a team as outrageously talented as City. But the bare facts are ugly: in 2016, Palace have recorded five league wins. On New Year's Day they were fifth, but ended last season in 15th, five points clear of relegation.
This season they are 16th, a single point clear of the bottom three. In the calendar year, they have gained 22 points from 31 games. That's the worst record in the top four English divisions. Spread over a full season, that would leave them with 27 points. No team has ever finished higher than second-bottom with that total in a 38-game Premier League season.
Calendar year statistics might be only loosely relevant, but the next three games see Palace visit Swansea and Hull, and a home game against Southampton. If they don't get points from those encounters, they will find themselves in the relegation zone and Pardew will have nobody to blame but himself.
You wonder whose fault he will think it is, though.