Armando Making Friends at Palace
With
not much optimism after all line defeat at Arsenal, we head back to London to
play Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park, always one of the more boisterous grounds
to visit.
Palace of had a bit of a transformation this season. Gone is the pragmatic,
dull as fuck football played on the Roy Hodgson and in has come Patrick Viera
to change the style somewhat. He has had limited success in that Wilfried
Manbaby Zaha is now no longer their only threat but it has to be said that the
results have been largely the same as if Hodgson had stayed. I imagine though,
but if you ask any Palace fan, there will be much happier with the direction they’re
heading at the moment.
Like us with Armando Broja and Tino Livramento, they’ve got a couple of decent players out of the Chelsea
academy, one on loan and the other permanently. Their loan is Conor Gallagher, who has been getting a lot of
attention recently, breaking into the England squad and it’s playing this game
off the back of scoring two goals at the weekend against Everton. The permanent signing is Marc Guehi, who joined to form a centre back pairing, usually
with Joakim Andersen, who managed to look decent last season playing for
dismally shit Fulham team that got relegated. Other signings this season include
Odsonne Edouard from Celtic, who we were linked with briefly, but having scored
two goals on his debut, he has more or less completely failed to do anything
since.
Saints striker injury nightmare was dominating most peoples thoughts in the
build up to the teams being announced and come an hour before kick-off, Armando
Broja was fit and it looks like he’s going to be partnered with Nathan Tella.
There is a bit of a surprise on the wing with Will Smallbone coming in for his
first start since the ACL injury over a year ago. This might seem like a bit of
a wild stab in the dark but let’s face it, no one has really played in those
wide areas and set the world alight for us this season so there is a place up
for grabs there if he does well. As
requested by yours truly on every platform that allows me to sound off, the
centre back pairing is completely changed from the Arsenal fiasco and in come
Salisu and Lyanco and with Oriol Romeu back from suspension, we have a much stronger
looking spine to the team.
Saints started brightly as usual. After an
early Romeu drive which narrowly clears the bar, we then get the ball down in
the Palace corner on the left wing through Tella who knocks it back to JWP, who
turns and knocks all the way back to Salisu. Salisu eventually tries to knock
it into Romeu in midfield but it’s under hit and Will Hughes piles in and wins
the ball as clean as you like with Edouard spreading the play out to Zaha on
the left wing. Because we’ve turned the ball over, neither of our full-backs are
in position and Zaha simply advances to the edge of the box, steps inside Lyanco
and smashes it past Caballero at the near post. Fucks sake, wankers!
We need to work our way back into it but that process doesn’t start
particularly well until Broja nicks the ball off Kouyate and barrels forward
with the Palace midfielder towing a caravan.
Broja finds Smallbone on the left hand side and he tries a very
optimistic shot off balance with his left foot and it slices away horribly into
the crowd.
It should really be 2-0 straight after that as Palace easily cut through us on our
right and Zaha is beyond Livramento and crossing into the box to where Edouard
has a free shot but maybe these kind of sitters are easier when you’re playing
in Scotland and he barely makes any connection at all and it dribbles wide for
a goal-kick in pathetic fashion. Whilst we could all laugh at shite like that,
it is just a matter of time at the moment unless we sort ourselves out. Similar
to the first goal against Arsenal on Saturday, we tried to press high up the
pitch but didn’t get anywhere near, so we ended up both not winning the ball
and not being in the right position defensively.
Lyanco starts a Saints attack with a break up the middle of the pitch and a
nice ball in to Broja and we ping a couple of passes between Tella and Smallbone
before Broja picks it up again and gets fouled by Hughes about 2 yards outside
the D. Hughes is complaining and even though the replay shows there’s not much
of a touch, you try staying on your feet when you’re at full pelt and someone
kicks your knee. Up steps JWP and I
don’t know about you… but my expectations are not as high as they were at the
start of last season with these free kicks but up he steps and it’s an absolute
belter over the wall and ripping away into the top left-hand corner as we look
at it, away from the flailing arm of Jack Butland. What a fucking goal. Get in!
Now can we actually go on and carry on taking the game to Palace. It does look like we have the press sorted out now, with Tella seemingly leading from the front and not allowing Palace any time and players like Tomkins and Guehi need time. Eventually Tomkins leathers the ball out under pressure, Salisu heads it down and Conor Gallagher picks up but he wants too much time as well and KWP gets a toe in and knocks it infield to Broja about 40 yards out. As he does, he just turns and head directly for goal, one touch and bang curling away from Butland and speeding into the corner of the net. 2-1, fucking brilliant goal again. Sign him up.
We play out the rest of the first half looking the better side and all is well as we reach the break. The key to this is surely staying on the front foot as Palace’s defence really doesn’t look great. We’ve also handled Gallagher pretty well. Palace start the second half of the ascendancy though and Saints have of a couple of chances to clear the first attack but neither Redmond’s balloon clearance up in the air or Romeu’s off balance header do the job and eventually the ball gets nodded over Salisu to Edouard who sees his first shot hit Big Willy in the chest and his second effort clawed away by the 40-year-old Saints legend in the making.
Palace send on Benteke and to the surprise of most it’s not in place of Edouard but in place of Kouyate so they now have two massive great units up front. It doesn’t have a direct effect but maybe we were panicking as a ball came into the box and bobbled around. It clearly hits Edouard on the hand but he gets the shot away which is saved by Caballero and Ayew rams it into the net on the rebound from a narrow angle. Surely that’s going up to VAR because it’s clearly his hand and both JWP and Salisu are in Mr Hooper‘s face about it. Check over. Goal given. Really??? I clearly don’t know the rules any more. I thought a handball in the build-up, deliberate or not, wasn’t allowed. The curse of the ‘bad streak’ has struck again – it’s Jordan Ayew’s first goal in the Premier League since Wilf Zaha was last not a prick… fuckin’ years ago.
Substitution time is here and unsurprisingly, it’s Smallbone and Broja, two making their way back from injury, that are replaced with Moussa Djenepo and Shane Long. I bet Palace are shitting it now! Nathan Tella is next to get hooked and on comes Theo Walcott. He was probably at Arsenal with Vieira about 20 years ago.
Neither team really looks like winning it to be honest. Ex-Skate Ward throws in a cross, which Big Willy claws away from under the bar and when it comes back in, the ex-Skate puts up a balloon and hits Row Z. For us, Walcott and Redmond create an opening for Djenepo who fools all the defenders with some snazzy footwork where he tries to do five things at once but as usual, fools himself and leaves the ball behind. Goal kick, what the fuck was that?
As the game winds down, Redmond makes most telling contribution of the game by running with the ball stopping, suckering Zaha into making a stupid challenge and the man baby gets booked. Djenepo manages not not fall over the ball long enough to pick up a ball from JWP on the edge of the box and tees it up for Romeu to take a touch and then swing a wildly optimistic left boot at it and send it over the bar. At least we are still some sort of threat to their goal. Not enough though and game over with a decent point.
Well if you’d offered me a draw at two minutes after the game started then I would’ve snapped your hand off. It was a deserved point at the end of the day but it’s hard to make a case that we deserved to win it despite being ahead at half-time. The good news was that we survived the appalling start and scored two absolute quality goals in the first half through JWP and Broja. The second half was always going to be a struggle because Palace were always going to come back into it and it’s just a shame that the second goal happened the way it did. Apparently, if Edouard had scored, it would have been disallowed for handball but because Big Willy saved it and Ayew put in the rebound, it counts. It’s fucking absurd. So, the is the message to the goalkeeper is that if you think the striker has handled it accidentally, then just let the shot go in? It’s fucking stupid. It’s not as if we have a chance to clear it after the save and it’s not as if it’s a new phase of play, or some such bullshit.
Let’s rewind back to the first goal for Palace which was unbelievable from our point of view. There we were attacking down the left wing and right in the corner, from where we should’ve been looking to cross the ball and other create a chance or win a corner or something but instead of that, we turn round and play all the way back into midfield, back to the central defenders back into midfield where we lose the fucking ball with our full backs ahead of the ball and two passes later we are 1-0 down. I mean, I can understand when you’re trying to attack and suddenly you have two banks of four in front of you and nowhere to go that you turn round and keep the ball but not from where we had it. Play the percentages, get it in the box for fuck‘s sake, we have a 6 foot 4 centre forward in there. People talk about progressing the ball these days – Palace didn’t need to progress the ball for the first 50 yards because we did it for them in what was a virtual carbon copy of the goal we let in against Palace on the opening day of last season. Romeu losing it in midfield, Zaha scores.
Will Hughes won the challenge on Romeu to set up the Palace goal and Palace will moan that Hughes challenge on Broja was not a foul. It was a fucking foul because he kicked his knee and he’s moving quickly so shut up you little rat faced twat and get on with the game. What a free-kick though? Absolute textbook and it’s about time he got one of those again. I love the second goal as well. The much-hyped Gallagher getting tackled by KWP and the ball going to Broja, who again showed what a threat he can be just by being direct. Two paces and bang, pick it out. Direct is good.
It was refreshing to see Wilf Zaha not being as big a tit as he normally is though there was one nice one moment where Lyanco clattered him and then just ignored him when Zaha started to spit the dummy. Talking of Lyanco, he and Salisu looked like a much better partnership on the clown show we had at the weekend, so I hope they stay in the team going forward. Big Willy did little pretty well in goal. He had very little protection on either goal but made some decent saves when he needed to. I also like the fact that his distribution is good and when he kicks it long it’s much more likely to go to a Saints player that is when either of the usual incumbents are in goal.
So, Big Willy was decent and so was Willy Smallbone, who did well in the first half before understandably fading in the second. What surprised me about him was the number of headers he wins to keep attacks alive. As I said at the start, no one has really shown much in those wide positions this season so there is an opportunity for him and he didn’t do any worse than anyone else has done so let’s hope he gets another go.
A major plus today was Nathan Tella up front who is beginning to look a lot more confident, even though he hasn’t scored yet. The constant harrying and pressing of the defence was very good and should’ve resulted in James Tomkins being sent off but I’m not gonna criticise the referee Simon Hooper, who I thought had a very good game.
Today showed that we have a few out injured at the moment with the three subs that we brought on being Theo Walcott, Shane Long and Moussa Djenepo. Djenepo in particular, looked like he had never played football before and Walcott barely touched the ball. To play the last 20 minutes with those three in the forward line means that hanging on for a draw was really the only option.
Personally I think it was a pretty good day for Ralph with Smallbone justifying his inclusion, the two centre backs doing a decent job and the two strikers looking a threat throughout. Hopefully, taking Broja and Tella her off means that they will be fit for the weekend against Brentford, who have been given a nice mid-week off by the Covid cases in the Manchester United camp. Any other team has probably got to have about 10 cases before they get a game called off but Manchester United have probably only got one. I have no evidence of this of course but we live in a world these days where you don’t need to have any evidence to declare something as a fact.
17 points now from 17 games – a win on Saturday and we reach the half way points target with one game to spare. That has to be the aim for Saturday….. and it’s just been called off so that’s it until after Christmas. It’s annoying because maybe we would have left Broja and Tella on today and had a better chance of winning in the last 20 minutes.
As it stands now, our next game is West Ham away on Boxing Day which like Arsenal and Everton away, is pretty much a guaranteed defeat. Bring it on. Up the fucking Saints.
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