Crystal Palace boss Peter Taylor demanded more goals from James Scowcroft after his hat-trick helped Crystal Palace to a 4-1 opening-day win at Saints.

Scowcroft's treble, and Clinton Morrison's strike for the fourth, condemned Saints to a dreadful start to the 2007/08 Coca-Cola Championship campaign, their only bright moment coming when Marek Saganowski briefly made the score 2-1 in first-half stoppage time.

Despite Scowcroft's efforts, Taylor chided the forward for not being prolific enough, and he expects the former Ipswich man - George Burley ironically gave him his Tractor Boys debut in the mid 1990s - to be more ruthless this term after his first hat-trick since 1998.

"James does not score enough goals," Taylor said. "We had a chat in pre-season, and I told him that. It is something he has to look at.

"He wants to join in the play all the time, but he has to learn to get closer to the box and closer to the goal.

"It is a very nice start to the season, but we won our first three games last season, and we finished 12th, so we have to learn from that."

During each of the last two seasons, Palace have been among the favourites for promotion to the top flight, but have fallen short of expectations under first Iain Dowie and then Taylor.

This term, Palace find themselves outside the group of clubs tipped for promotion, but Taylor is convinced his players can prove such gloomy forecasts wrong.

He continued: "We think we are better than what people are saying about us.

"We know we under-achieved last year, but people are quoting us to finish 11th or 12th. We are going to prove a point on that one".

Meanwhile, ex-Saints star James Beattie scored on his Sheffield United debut in a 2-2 home draw with Colchester United.

Another former Saint, Pele, came off the West Brom bench in the second half of their 2-1 loss at Burnley.

Beattie's former St Mary's strike partner, Kevin Phillips, had put last season's beaten play-off finalists ahead at Turf Moor.