Premier League Match 24 - Crystal Palace 0 Southampton 2

Guess Who's Back in Form

A short turnaround and off we go to Selhurst Park to play Crystal Palace. This, in my opinion, is the ideal game to have after the disappointment of the Wolves game at the weekend. Palace I’ve got one player he can do something brilliant but other than that they are a journeyman side and if we play like we have been playing in away games, recently, then I fully expect us to come away with something.

When they came to St Mary‘s a few weeks ago, Palace were a massive team of bell-ends. They obviously fancy themselves as hard men and when they don’t get things their own way they do tend to throw their toys around a lot and you have to rely on the referee being decent enough to deal with it but of course, most of them aren’t. Today we have Andre Marriner who is one of the referees with a bit of a reputation so it will be interesting to see how he handles the inevitable when it happens later on.

Palace have been hanging around the top half of the table for most of the season which is a bit of a mystery because they are not very good. They still haven’t got a striker who scores any goals and basically have one tactic which is getting the ball to Wilf. They have signed Cenk Tosun on-loan from Everton and he scored at the weekend but he is not the type of striker who will put the fear of God into our defence. Our defence may be reshuffled a bit tonight because Ralph has revealed that Jan Bednarek will not be playing because of an injury picked up against Wolves. I guess it will be one of Yoshida or Vestergaard and bearing in mind that the big man was on the bench on Saturday and Yoshida wasn’t, I’m expecting it to be Vestergaard, especially as Palace do not have a lot of pace upfront.

In the event, our team shows two changes with Vestergaard and Obafemi coming into the side with Danny Ings dropping to the bench. If they play well, a forward line of Long and Obafemi has the pace to cause massive problems to the Palace center-backs, Tomkins and Cahill. Martin Kelly is at right-back and hopefully, he can provide us with another assist like he did at St Mary‘s.

The first action of note is the Palace left-back Reidowald piling in on Cedric. He got a little bit of the ball and a lot of the man. It’s the sort of challenge that referees are supposed to clamp down on these days but Andre Marriner decides not to bother. We take the throw, lose the ball and Palace break but Zaha’s crossfield pass is cut out by Vestergaard who then makes a complete fuck of it by getting tackled by Ayew.  The ball falls to Tosun who runs unopposed to about 15 yards out where with a bit of composure he must score but thankfully, Everton have loaned him out for a reason and that reason is that he is complete gash – and he hits a shot at the moon.  What the fuck was that?

Cedric can’t carry on from the challenge which Andre Marriner thought was okay and he’s off to be replaced by Oriol Romeu who goes into the centre of midfield with JWP going to right-back where he is in direct competition with King Bell-End himself, Wilfried Zaha.  It’s amusing because JWP is, of course, living rent-free in Zaha’s head.

On we go and Jack Stephens brings the ball forward to the halfway line and chips the ball into Redmond’s feet.  Redmond twists Kelly inside out and before Tomkins and McArthur can get anywhere near, he lashes it with his right foot across the keeper and arrowing into the top corner. Absolutely brilliant goal.

Saints are playing really well, breaking up every Palace attack and springing on them on the break every time. Redmond put Bertrand away down the left and his cross is met by Armstrong who flicks at goalwards but Guaita easily pushes it over the bar. We work another chance from the corner as Redmond runs across the top of the penalty area, gets clattered late by Tomkins with the ball going to Armstrong who lines up another shot that flies all the way along the ground but just wide. Andre Marriner decides not to come back for the late challenge by Tomkins because that sort of thing is okay today apparently.

There is a Palace attack down our left where Zaha does get the better of everybody and gets the ball into the box but Vestergaard slides in well to clear the danger.  He seems to have recovered well from his early aberration. We eventually clear it and we are away on the break again with Redmond down the left. Redmond cuts infield again and plays a straight ball for Shane Long’s run and he gets there before the keeper but miraculously, doesn’t dive and just runs the ball out of play.  I’m sure that Zaha would’ve stayed on his feet like that at the other end so it’s fair enough.

Half time and as the players are leaving the pitch, Zaha is arguing with Vestergaard and JWP and he clearly sticks his hand in JWP is face and it looks like he poked him in the eye. JWP doesn’t make a meal of it and the Palace stewards are on the pitch to try and stop Zaha being a complete prick. As the players leave the pitch, the incident is reviewed by VAR and whatever fucking idiot is watching it away from the ground decides that aggressively putting your hand in someone’s face is not a red card offence, which according to the rules, it clearly is. Another example of VAR being a complete fucking joke.

To be honest, we’ve been brilliant so far and the loss of Cedric and the reshuffle has not affected us at all. Romeu is playing at a faster pace than I think I have ever seen him play out before and we look like a really good team. Palace on the other hand, look shite with one tactic of getting the ball to Wilf not working because Wilf has lost his shit completely.

Palace have the first attack of the second half but Tosun heads a half chance towards the corner flag and we build again down our left with Bertrand and Obafemi linking with Redmond who drifts past a couple of players and lays the ball infield to Armstrong who gets it out of his feet with his first touch and with his second, smashes it with his right foot, curling it away from Guaita and into the net to give us a 2-0 lead. His hair is fine and he scores worldies all the time (as the song goes) and this is another superb goal.

Scoring Worldies All the Time

We are on a mission to get Zaha sent off again and we are winding him up more and more. Every time he goes back into his own half, which is not often because he’s a lazy fucker when his team has not got the ball, one of us always leaves something on him. It’s never that bad but he always ends up sitting on his arse and waving his arms around in wild-eyed petulance and it’s beautiful to see.

Saints are still playing all the football and Stephens marauds forward before giving the ball away but all that does is give us a chance to win it back which we do through Hojbjerg and Long and it breaks to Obafemi who plays a simple but superb pass through to Shane Long who literally has the goalkeeper to beat from roughly the penalty spot. The Palace keeper is basically given it up and Shane just passes it to him. I assumed it must be offside and he was just giving the fucking ball back but no, it is that bad.

Tomkins is proving himself to be almost as big an arsehole as Zaha as again he clatters Redmond and Andre Marriner does absolutely fuck all. There is a bit of a flare-up between the two players and Redmond taps him on the back of the neck which is enough to get booked which is fucking ridiculous when compared to Zaha’s half-time incident.

More great play from Hojbjerg sess Redmond run to the left force Guaita into making another save and our pursuit of the third goal goes on, so Shane is off and Danny Ings is his replacement. Palace’s idea of improving things is to take Tosun off and replace him with Connor Wickham who is and has always been shit. He looks more dangerous than Tosun though but his wild left-footed effort flies into the crowd.

With 10 minutes to go, Obafemi goes off to be replaced by our £15 million fourth-choice striker, Che Adams.  We have a chance on the break to make it three but Ings smashes a shot over the bar but it’s academic and we run out easy 2-0 winners. A brilliant night's work and right up there in the list of most dominant away Premier League performances but I can remember us putting in.

That was absolutely magnificent. There was only one team out there all game and Palace honestly couldn’t have complained if we had won about 5-0. We were so much better than them it wasn’t true. All the players were pretty immaculate today, especially McCarthy whose kit was unblemished from when the game started. Vestergaard had the best game I have ever seen him have apart from his one mistake in the first half which admittedly was a bit of a calamity. Every time the ball went in the air, which was frequently, then there was the big man to hide it away. Today he did actually time everything correctly and got off the ground and Palace didn’t get any joy from that tactic which basically left them with getting the ball out to Wilf.

JWP and a Dickhead

It was a delicious irony when Cedric went off and JWP had to play at right-back in direct opposition to Zaha. Of course, the Saints man got beaten a couple of times but I doubt there are many right-backs who have handled Zaha better than JWP. Zaha is a fucking wanker. He was like it when we played them in the championship in 2011 and 2012 and nine years later he is still like it.

Here are some quotes from this blog in 2012:

Zaha has managed about 60 minutes without being a complete cock so it’s not a surprise when as the tackles start flying from Chappers.  Zaha decides to steam over to Corky, dives in, comes out without the ball and then shoves him over earning an inevitable yellow card.

Palace make a tactical switch with the Zaha coming over to the right as he’s thrown so many toys out of his pram on the left, there wasn’t enough room to play football anymore. 

And from 2011:

Wilfried Zaha is another Palace player with a bit of a reputation but if he’s not careful, he’ll get a reputation for being a knob.  Danny Fox tries to dribble round him and kind of screws it up and just runs into him and gives the ball away before having a little tap at his ankles.  Zaha gets the red mist, turns round and shoves him in the neck.  To be fair to the ref, he’s obviously seen Foxy’s kick as he gets a yellow card for it and fair enough.  He then however decides to ignore the rule about raising your hands to an opponent though and Zaha doesn’t even get spoken to.

The incident has got to Zaha though as he spends the rest of the first half throwing his arms around as a succession of decisions don’t go his way. 

So, 8 or 9 years and he hasn’t learned.  Zaha was about 18 or 19 when these games happened – he’s now 27 and a grown man and it’s fucking embarrassing. There’s a reason why his career is disappearing into a vortex of nothing at Crystal Palace. He has the ability to play for a top club but his temperament is fucking dreadful. Any decent manager at the top six club would’ve substituted him at half-time but because Palace have absolutely nothing else and Hodgson is pretty weak, they leave him on and run the risk of him getting sent off. Not that there was much risk of him getting sent off today with a combination of Andre Marriner and the VAR fuckwits. Everyone saw the pictures at half-time where Zaha looks like he poked JWP in the eye and even if he didn’t poke him in the eye, his hand was on his face which is a red card offence. As said, VAR looked at it and decided that it wasn’t a red card offence so they have changed the fucking rules there.  Nothing will happen of course because it will be admitting that their precious VAR system is a fucking joke but the FA should review that and Zaha should get a ban. As far as Saints are concerned it really doesn’t matter much because it will only benefit the team is the Palace are playing next but the fucking dickhead deserves to be sat on his arse for three games. Put it this way Wilf, we had a makeshift right-back for 70 minutes and you did fuck all because you’ve got yourself in a right little tantrum.

Elsewhere, we had magnificent performances all over the pitch, Stephens, Bertrand, Redmond, Armstrong, Hojbjerg. Up front as predicted, Long and Obafemi ran them ragged. If Shane Long had any ability in front of goal he would be a £20 million striker but the miss in the second half is one of the worst misses you will ever see from a Premier League striker.

Ralph deserves a huge amount of credit because he rolled the dice today with a couple of changes and then had to make another one when Cedric got injured early on and the team stuck completely to the game plan and were superb from minute one minute 95. We are always nervous because we are Southampton but that was as comfortable as it gets. Palace didn’t have a shot on target, nor win a corner.

As regular readers will know, I’m not that arsed about looking at league but I’m going to do it today because we are 9th, 3 points off Man United in 5th and 8 points ahead of Bournemouth in the last relegation spot. Awesome.

Four away wins in the bounce - who’s next? Liverpool .... shit!

Before that though, it’s Spurs at home in the Cup.  Bring it on.