It’s easy to think that teams have sussed us out, because Palace closed us down quickly all over the park and suffocated the play. It didn’t allow either side to really get a grip or take a stranglehold on the match.
But I didn’t feel they did anything special to stop us from playing. It was just a typical Warnock style performance with plenty of in-your-face about it, which his teams are renown for doing. There wasn’t a great deal of finesse with their approach, but they worked hard and were committed.
It made the quality of the play a little bit dull though and although there were plenty of golden opportunities for both teams, they seemed to come from nowhere rather than born out of intelligent build up play.
It needed our creative players to relax and just play simple and direct football, because Palace weren’t too strong and I felt Clint Hill was always there for the taking but Wayne Routledge seemed reluctant to really drive at him, even when there was plenty of space in behind and he wasn’t the only one who didn’t seize on such opportunities.
At times it was like we were trying to walk the ball into the net. Adel Taarabt showed some nice glimpses of skill, but when he got through he tried a cute cheeky dink, which to be fair he was a little bit unlucky with. And then later he tried a drive with the outside of his foot when he could have just put his foot through the ball and been a bit more sensible and clinical with the finish. These things are all well and good and we do have the players who can deliver with outstanding skill, but with the score at 1-1, sometimes it’s about just putting the ball in the back of the net and then doing the fancier stuff later.
The other criticism I have with tonight’s performance is the full-backs never really got forward enough. We played quite square at the back and Gary Borrowdale and Mikele Leigertwood could have made more overlapping runs to create space and stretch the play a little bit. Instead, they seemed to hold their position a lot more in this match than we’ve done in recent games and that created more situations where our players in midfield and attack had to do a little bit more on the ball than necessary.
Still, it’s another point on the board and a good point at that. It’s important to keep picking up points and making it a habit. In this match, we could have easily taken all three but by the same token, we could have ended up with none too, so a draw was probably just about a fair result in the end.
I hope we can restrict the opposition to less glorious chances than we’ve allowed in recent matches, so it’s important we work on this area of our play so that it doesn’t come back to haunt us as there are teams out there who will punish us more than Palace if we give them the chance.
Julian Speroni also made some great saves for them in goal and he’s always performed well against us over the years. Fair play to him on another top performance for them, but at the same time, we’ve got to be more ruthless in front of goal too.
Comments are closed.