Paolo edges Kelvin Closer to the Rest Home
Crystal Palace away is not the sort of game that you
want when you’re not in decent form. Alan Pardew has got them playing
some decent stuff with real width and pace in the team. If they had a
centre forward instead of Conor Wickham when they’d be challenging for the
Champions League spots. If you ignore Leicester for a second, I feel that
Palace are going to be ‘this seasons Southampton’ in that they’re going to
exceed expectations and therefore will probably get pillaged by all and sundry
in the summer.
Signing of the season for anyone has been Yohan
Cabaye. Everyone suspected that it would be a great buy at the time and
it’s just been proven virtually every week. When the big boys are paying
£20 million plus for average players in that position, Palace picked up Cabaye
for £10m. Proven international quality and proven to be able to handle
the Premier League and a player at his peak right now. He would get in
every single staring line up in the Premier League so it makes me laugh that the
big boys weren’t interested. It proves
to me that they don’t actually think.
Having said that it’s a bit of a daunting game for us,
apparently we’ve won our last 7 league games against them which is an amazing
stat and a pretty irrelevant one. They were pretty poor in both games
against us last season, especially at Selhurst when we won easily by 3-1 with
goals from Mané, Bertrand and Toby Aldershithouse. We could do with a
result like that today somewhat.
The team news was on the face of it... horrific.
Out went Stekelenburg, Ward-Prowse, Tadic and Pellè and in came Gazzaniga,
Romeu, Yoshida and Long. Three at the back and two defensive
midfielders. Hmmmm! News came down that both Stekelenburg and Pellè
were carrying knocks so that put a bit of a better slant on it in and I’m
pleased Gazza was in the side after Kelvin’s ‘proving he’s done’ display
against Leicester, earlier in the season. Graziano is fit for the bench.
Away we go and the first incident of note is a ball in
behind the Palace left back and Long is chasing it with Souare the Palace left
back, who ignores the ball and runs towards Long who shoves him on his
arse. The Palace fans give it loads but
their man deserved all he got. Proper
football broke out and Cabaye put a ball down our left flank and Yoshida
covered over and made a complete balls of it and gives away a corner. This gets drilled over and ends up with
Bolasie on the opposite side. His cross
gets caught by the gale and goes from harmlessly floating out of play to heading
towards the top corner but Gazza is alert and does well to tip it over the
bar. I tell you what – Kelvin would have
left that.
Meanwhile, the corner is headed back to Cabaye and he
absolutely creams it on the volley at the near post and it’s going in but Gazza
is there again to shovel it over the bar and get knocked off his feet in the
process. Another corner and this time,
Fonte doesn’t go with Wickham who gets across the front of him and heads
goalwards only for Gazza to block again and for Davis to belt it clear. It’s arse twitching time.
As usual, we’re not helping ourselves. Our desire to keep possession at all costs
rather than do something positive and decisive bites us as Cédric heads at full
pelt back towards his own goal rather than just clear it and ends up getting
bundled off the ball by Bolasie and the ball eventually finds its way onto the
other side to Zaha who is pumping David Moyes daughter but he stops for long
enough to drive a shot over the bar.
It’s a matter of time before they score but on 25, we
at least create a chance on the break as Mané breaks clear, evades a lunge from
Souare and plays a good ball over the top to Long who curls an effort over the
bar when he really might have been better to hold it up for a bit and wait for
support. Hang on a second – we’re
playing football now with some sharp passing in the final third and a clever Mané
back heel putting Cédric away and his superb cross is flicked goalwards by the
head of Davis but Hennessey takes off and claws out a superb save. Bastard.
After this little spell and appearing to be on top, we
immediately undo it in predictable fashion.
A boom forwards and another shit header from Yoshida straight to a
Palace player. The ball is played
through to a Bolasie on their right who looks offside but no flag is
raised. He walks round José as if he
isn’t there before laying it on a plate for a totally unmarked Cabaye to score
from 6 yards. Absolute wank. Ok, it was possibly offside but it was
complete shite from two of our three centre backs and considering we have two
designated defensive central midfielders – why the fuck hadn’t one of them
tracked Cabaye as he arrived in the box.
Mind you, the whole situation doesn’t develop if Yoshida heads the
fucking ball with his forehead instead of his nose.
Not much happens in the ten minutes before half time
and so we arrive in the changing room 1-0 down.
It’s been incredibly patchy but with Tadic and Pellè on the bench –
there’s no need to feel that we are out of this yet. I feel there is not much point persevering
with this 3 at the back as we’re 1-0 down.
We start the 2nd half ok with a great move
up the right hand side with Cédric and Davis combining to eventually set up
Romeu who drills a left footed effort from 25 yards straight at Hennessey. They soon look more dangerous than us though
and every time Bolasie gets it we just shit ourselves. He rampages past some shocking defending on
our right and presents another chance to Zaha who might as well have stayed
shagging Moyes’ daughter in Manchester as he blazes over again.
It’s substitution time with Yoshida being dragged to
send Pellè on and much to my annoyance, Davis is off for Tadic. Why the fuck has Davis come off? Surely one of Romeu or Big Vic should have
gone. Nothing much happens and the 3rd
change sees Romeu off and JWP on.
Into the last ten and Cabaye is still pulling the
strings and his superb diagonal pass picks out Wickham who controls well and
hits it left footed. It’s right down in
the bottom corner but Gazza gets down superbly to tip it round the post. Great save and he’s at it again as the corner
flicks off someone in the middle and Bolasie smashes it goalwards back across
the keeper but he again shows superb reactions to get down and block once
more. This is the best save of the lot
for me.
With time disappearing, Virgil bombs one forward to
Graziano who gets up and flicks on to Long.
He’s clean through and behind Delaney who is towing a caravan and he
hits it, too close to Hennessey and he sticks out a boot to deflect it
wide. Bollocks, that was the chance.
Blah, another poor result. You could argue this one either way... you
could say that we created enough chances and had enough play to get a point but
in terms of threat, Palace deserved to win a lot more comfortably than they did
and if it wasn’t for Paolo Gazzaniga then they would have done. Possession wins you fuck all on its own. I guarantee one thing and that’s that Palace won’t
give a shit about having 40% possession every game cos with that 40% they’ll
create more chances and have more shots on goal than virtually every other team
they play against. Our season was pretty
much summed up in this game. We didn’t
create that much but we had a great chance to nick a point at the end and if
your strikers are clinical then we score and everyone from Southampton goes
home happy. Shane shouldn’t have given
the keeper a prayer but he just smashed it too close to him and it’s a decent
save. The finish he produced for Ireland
against Germany… that’s what was needed.
The positives… well that miss at the end did provide a
positive in that it showed the value of playing with two up front. The ball up to Graziano and instead of trying
to hold it up and getting battered, he flicked it on and Shane got in behind
him. The main positive though was of
course Gazzaniga who I have given dogs abuse to in the past. He was magnificent today though and probably
produced more saves in the one game than any of our keepers have in the past
two seasons. It showed the absolute
folly of having Kelvin Davis as our keeper on the bench this season and don’t
get me started on that Leicester home game. Steve Davis was decent in midfield
and Oriol Romeu put himself about strongly.
The other side of the coin was that we played three at the back and
that’s ok in itself but it means that Yoshida comes in and he’s having a shocker
of a time recently. It seems like the
only goals we let in that he doesn’t have a hand in is when he’s off the pitch.
His crap header contributed to the goal but the other more alarming problem is
the form of José Fonte who is all over the place at the moment. His horrible non-attempt to stop Bolasie on
the lead up to the goal summed it up – too weak in the challenge.
Out came the social media keyboard warriors after the
game with ‘Koeman out’ being on the agenda.
Unbelievable and not worthy of my time here other than to say that an 18
year old would have been 12 when Markus rocked up and we started improving,
therefore having no knowledge of Poortvliet, Burley, Redknapp, and loads of
other shite we’ve had to put up with right back to Branfoot. We’re quick to slaughter Chelsea and City
fans for having no knowledge of the time before money when in a smaller way, if
you think Koeman should go, you’re exactly the same. Sure, there have been some questionable
decisions this season but aside from Ranieri at Leicester, show me one manager
who has not been questioned. Get a grip.
Personally I think we’re having the season that we
should have had last year with all the changes.
It’s very disjointed and we go from looking very good to very bad,
sometimes within the course of one game.
We lost a load of players in the mass desertion of 2014 but this year we
lost the most important one in Schneiderlin and he’s the first one that’s been
irreplaceable.
Our next two games are bastards as well and they’re
both at home to the North London massive of firstly Spurs and then
Arsenal. My dislike of Spurs knows no
bounds so what better game to kick start the season again. There seems to be some confusion as to
whether Aldershithouse is a bad guy or not.
He is, he’s a wanker, great player but a wanker. There seems to be some confusion as to
whether Spurs acted properly or not over his transfer. Their actions were dubious at best. Let’s fucking do it.
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