Sammy Lee Forgets Who He Works for as he Celebrates our First Goal
A
quick return to St.Mary’s to play a Crystal Palace side on the up and three
days after they’ve just
won at Chelsea which was their 4th win in a row. Mind you, we played then when they were shit
and had lost 5 games in a row and we got tanked 3-0 in one of those games
against a relegation threatened side which we totally failed to show up for. That was back in the pre-Gabbiadini days when
we would have 65% possession and not score.
Now it’s different of course… oh no it’s not with the main striker
injured so who would be the striker missing all the chances tonight, Shane or
J-Rod?
After
initially making no difference at all in terms of results, Fat Sam has got
Palace playing and giving themselves a good chance of staying up. With the players they have they shouldn’t be
anywhere near the bottom really but that’s where they still are. In January they added again when they paid
the ridiculous money Liverpool were after to loan in rumoured Saints target
Mamadou Sakho. They also got Patrick van
Aanholt from Sunderland and the holding midfielder they desperately needed in Milla
Jovovic was brought in from Russion side, Resident Evil I get a lot of Palace knowledge from my boss
at work who is a home and away Palace fan.
He’s still convinced that they’re going down, especially if they lose
tonight, despite the last 4 results. The
reason for his pessimism is Fat Sam’s natural conservatism in trying to draw
six-pointers and the fact that they have horrible fixtures left.
On that
score, we might have games in hand but we have all the top boys left to
play. Lose this tonight and I think we
could be as little as 4 points above the drop zone. So, Claude needs to get this one right having
not got the Bournemouth game right.
Well, the starting XI is disappointing in my book, Once again we have the same centre backs and
the only changes are Shane in for J-Rod and Ryan Bertrand is missing presumed
injured which gives a start to Sam McQueen.
Boufal is injured yet again so Sims returns to the bench and the bench
full-back is Jeremy Pied, back for the first time since season Day 1.
I have
to say that I have no expectations for this game. Any discussion about potential scorelines and
I’ve been saying 1-0 to Palace. There’s
a natural pessimism about us scoring with no Gabbi and I anticipate Benteke
causing havoc in the air. They’ll bomb
it up there – of that there is no doubt and I bet Benteke parks himself next to
Stephens and just wins everything. I’m
not worried about Zaha – even though he’s been on fire recently. He never does anything against us except dive
about and throw his toys out. Andros
Townsend on the other hand, always seems to score against us.
Palace
kick off and it’s straight back to Kelly and booooom up towards Benteke and no
one gets near him as he brings it down on his chest and just lays it off. Not a positive indicator to how we’re going
to deal with him. Anyway, we get hold of
the ball and Romeu finds Long who plays a give and go with Redmond and he’s in
away from Kelly on the left and he shoots across Hennessey and inches wide of
the far post. It’s close and it’s a good
effort but it should be on target.
We
completely dominate the first 15 as Palace just seem to sit off and low us
space. JWP plays a brilliant first time
ball, curling between Sakho and Schlupp and into the path of Long but he seems
to take a panicky swing at the ball and just grubs it through to
Hennessey. Another chance goes begging.
Palace’s
first chance comes when Zaha gets binned about 20 yards out by Romeu. It’s a left footers free kick so I (and
Fraser I think) am expecting Puncheon or Townsend to hit it but Milla Jovovic
goes the other way and it hits the outside of the post whilst everyone
including Fraser stands still and watches it.
There
are chances at both ends with short arse Redmond beating Skate Ward to a Cedric
cross and forcing a scrambling save out of Hennessey and an Fat Sam classic long
ball and knock down from Benteke forcing Romeu to get himself in the way of
Zaha’s shot and send it over the bar.
Whilst it’s now an even game, we’ve still butchered so many chances and
of course, when you do that, you go behind as Palace got it down and Zaha
weaves across our box with everyone scared to tackle him, shifted it on to
Puncheon who played Townsend in behind McQueen who should have cut out the
pass. Townsend fires it over and Benteke
scores from 3 yards. Shit. Good goal but
shit!
The
referee today is Roger East and he’s determined to prove why he doesn’t referee
in the Premier League much. Redmond
skins Skate Ward and digs out a deep cross which reaches Tadic. He tries to flip it over Schlupp who
basically slaps it away with his hand as he turns. No penalty – fuck knows why. Arm in an unnatural position unless his
shoulder is fixed on upside down. A
minute later and Tadic beats Sakho and puts a perfect ball into Long, in behind
Resident Evil, contact and down he goes.
From the Chapel End (the other end) it looks like a dive and it’s Shane
so it probably is and it’s not given.
It’s
looking like we’re going in 1-0 down and that’s depressing but then the ref and
lino cut us a break. Cedric puts in a
low cross from the right and Sakho clears it out to the wing. Zaha gets there first and Davis puts the
shoulder in and knocks him flying. Play
on. Davo hits it over and it arrives
with Redmond at the back post and his brings it down and screws it across and
into the far corner. Get in you
beauty. Palace are going nuts at the ref
now but the lino was right next to it.
Methinks Wilf and Shane are paying for past indiscretions of the going
down too easily variety. Half time and
the great news is that the goal has meant that the second half won’t
immediately be a time wasting bore fest.
Cabaye
is off for them and replaced with Sako which weakens their already weak
midfield but does give them another huge bastard on the pitch. Whilst Sako might be huge, he is ‘proper
shit’ as the phrase goes. The second half starts in much the same vein as the
first. We’re on top in the main but
being whatever the opposite of clinical is.
Redmond creates the first chance on the left again – dunno where Skate
Ward was and plays it over. Shane plays
an airshot, JWP sees two efforts blocked and it eventually falls to Cedric on
the edge of the box and he once again shows why he’s never scored for us as his
effort flies just wide.
Tadic is
having one of those games that he always seems to have for the Serbian national
team when he looks like one of the best players in the world. He slides a superbly weighted ball in behind
the defence and Shane Long is through again.
Hennessey hesitates slightly and when he eventually comes out, Shane
clips it over him and unlike the identical chance against Bournemouth which he
clipped wide, this time he mixes it up and clips it up, up and over the fucking
bar.
At the
other end, Benteke is now winning everything and Palace are noticeably going longer. On one occasion when they get it down and
play, Zaha is halted by some shite refereeing by Roger East to give Palace a
free kick 30 yards further back. Never
mind though and in it goes to Benteke and it falls to Kelly who hooks in a shot
which crashes off the post and Zaha lashes the rebound wide.
Tadic
creates another chance for Romeu which he hits, sees it deflect and Hennessey
gets down to push it wide. JWP’s corner
is spot on the head of Yoshida but again, Hennessey saves comfortably enough. Tadic then yet again superbly puts Long
through but Hennessey is out quickly again and makes a superb save to leave
Shane wondering why the world is against him.
Fat Sam has taken off Schlupp and brought on Delaney but instead of
switching Kelly to left back as I expected, they’ve decided to go with 3 at the
back with Townsend as a left wing back.
Ten
minutes to go and we’ve made no subs as yet which is a bit strange bordering on
a miracle and we must score, surely this time.
Nope. Redmond and Tadic combine
to set up Davis and his first shot is goalbound but the human mountain Sakho
gets in the way and then Delaney blocks the follow up shot and Davo makes the
mistake of running into him and it’s like a brick wall across a motorway and
Davo needs treatment for a few minutes.
Redmond
has been tormenting the shit Skate Ward all game and lines him up once more and
does him again on the outside. His pull
back is knocked square (not altogether intentionally) by Stephens and there is
Maya Yoshida stealing in to knock it into the empty net whilst all the Palace
players appeal for offside rather than defending. Can we hang on for the remaining 5 or so
minutes? A long ball forward from Palace
and then we get our answer as we break and the ball goes from Tadic to Long to
Tadic to JWP to Tadic to Cedric and across for JWP to score from 6 yards and
then pull out the shittiest knee slide in the history of the game but no
matter, 3-1. What a goal and absolutely brilliant
from Tadic who was involved three times and spot on with every touch. It won’t be goal of the month because no one
has smashed it into the net from 30 yards but it’s absolutely brilliant.
Davis is
off to be replaced with Hojbjerg and Redmond takes a bow to give J-Rod a run on
the left. There is only time for Fraser
to push a Puncheon free kick over the bar after Yoshida had carted Zaha up in
the air. Full time and job done.
Get
in. Well I never saw that coming at
all. I was pissed off and resigned to a
1-0 defeat when we missed chance after chance in the first 20, annoyed up until our first goal, happy enough
at the start of the second half, pissed off that we kept missing chances and
then on top of the world at the end. All
over the place, like the Palace defence in the 2nd half once Fat Sam
went to three at the back.
They
gave us a bit of space and we exploited it.
When you think about who played well for us then you look at all the
attacking midfielders. Tadic was a
genius today. As individual performances
go it was up there with Eyal Berkovic against Man United in the 6-3 win. Watch the replay of the move that led to the
third goal. Tadic was involved three
times and every time it was a superb touch, followed by a superbly weighted
pass. The assist will go to Cedric and
the goal to JWP but that goal was all about Dusan Tadic – which is another
example of why stats can be bollocks.
Nathan Redmond was fantastic throughout.
His highlight was burning up the Skate twat Ward and setting up the
second goal. Again the assist and goal
will go to others but Nathan was the man on that goal. After being ropey against Bournemouth, JWP
was superb tonight. The tone was set
after 5 minutes when he hit a superb first time curling pass to dissect the
defence and Shane fucked it up of course.
Christian Eriksen played one of those passes against us and it was
highlighted massively and everyone was creaming themselves over it. JWP’s pass didn’t even make it into the Match
of the Day highlights though they did talk about it at the end.
Did we
handle Benteke… no quite frankly. He won
every single header but Palace didn’t get enough players round him frequently
enough so we were usually able to pick up the 2nd ball and clear the
danger. Fraser continued his recent
improvement in goal and Sam McQueen was solid enough though I did feel he got
caught out a bit on the Palace goal.
Oriol and Davo were decent in midfield and bossed it in the main though
Oriol did eventually pick up his tenth booking of the season and will miss the
next two games which is a shame but it gives one of Hojbjerg or Clasie a chance
to stake a claim to play more often.
Shane
Long – fucking hell. Maybe he should be
a goalkeeper because he’s as expert at keeping the score down. He works so hard and if he had even average finishing
ability he’d score 20 a season every year.
I would persevere with him against West Brom next week… a) because it’s
West Brom and he used to play for them and b) because their central defenders
are about 35 each and not the quickest.
Fat Sam
of course made a big deal out of the Davis challenge on Zaha for our first
goal. I feel that with Zaha, like with
Shane Long, referees know they dive about and so unless it’s nailed on, there’s
a decent chance that they won’t get the free kick or penalty when they hit the
deck. I’m amazed that it wasn’t given as
a free kick but there you go, play to the whistle chaps. I thought Fat Sam killed Palace when he
brought on Delaney and changed formation to 3 at the back. The game was fairly even until that point but
suddenly they had Townsend at left back which he clearly hates and there was
even more space in the central midfield for us to our through. The second and third goals both came from
wide areas which are not so well protected when you have 3 at the back. So, that formation change was the biggest
fucking he’d given himself since he decided to comment on getting round the
rules 3rd party ownership of players. Fat Twat.
So –
the league table certainly looks a bit better now and we’re up to 9th
and there’s no way we’re going to get dragged into it. All the other results in the midweek games
were good to us on that score as well so we can move on and have a crack at West
Brom away on Saturday. They reached 40
points in record time for them this year and have been in beach mode on
occasions since so it’s a good time to be playing them and why not. Hopefully Gabbi will make it back at least as
far as the bench and maybe it’ll be the game where Shane Long has five chances
and scores three. A bit late for April
Fools that one…
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