This one will go down in the books as one to forget. Thanks to a lost car keys incident, I only managed to catch the second-half of this match that saw an already relegated Palace side register their first victory of the season.
Okay we have a threadbare squad at the moment and had to call up players not only from the Reserves, but from the Third team too. But we still expected a better performance and a positive result – we ended up with neither.
We were sloppy and poor all over the park and a lot of the players didn’t have their usual zip about them. I talk a lot about desire and enthusiasm and the really top players have this in abundance and maintain their hunger for the game from the first kick of the season until the last.
For players like Simone Dwyer, it doesn’t matter what happens in between, or whether we’re going for titles or cups, or fighting against relegation or playing a meaningless mid-table game or even a friendly. She always gives 100% no matter what and some of her team-mates could have taken a leaf out of her book here.
The reality of the situation is since we’ve secured our Premiership status and won the FA Senior Middlesex County Cup, a lot of players have disappointingly taken their foot off the gas and let their standards drop.
Both teams did actually create enough chances to add to the scoreline, but our finishing wasn’t good enough and we really should have come away with a point at the very least, even if our general play may have given us what we deserved. Palace though could and should have added to their solitary goal too.
I was surprised at how poorly we passed the ball. There was a lot of kick and rush and just aimlessly punting the ball in a general direction and hoping something would come of it, yet we’ve got the players and the ability to keep the ball on the deck and move it around.
We are much better than resorting to percentage play, but that’s what we ended up doing and it was our downfall. It wasn’t good enough for us to unlock the door and we struggled to deal with the same style of play defensively.
You just wonder sometimes why on some occasions, we don’t recognise what’s going on ourselves within the game and what to do to change it. It can be hard to get the message across or make the players see what looks so obviously wrong when they’re pent up with frustration at how things are panning out.
It was a really bad day at the office and next season we’ve got to work hard on our pattern play and understand that when we’re playing teams that we’ve got to pry open and do all the intricate creative work, we need to show a lot more discipline, patience and nous than we have done this season.
We’ve lost too many times against teams we shouldn’t have and in this match and in recent weeks, we’ve looked a little short of gas in the tank too. All these things have remedies and it’s up to the players to put in the graft to ensure their levels are more consistent and that will allow them to flourish for longer.
Having said all of that, the players have done well this season under trying circumstances and have still come away with silverware. So that shows that there is a deep resolve and character within the squad, but the same core players can’t keep carrying the team every week because if they are not up to scratch or missing for whatever reason – then the cracks can start to show.
It’s important we look to end the season on a high and that we go all out to play to the level and ability that we know we’re capable of with the remaining two games. Sometimes some players need to believe in themselves a little bit more, because there’s an awful lot of good talent and enthusiasm here and we can certainly play when we really want to.
The challenge now is to put the recent defeats to Charlton and Crystal Palace to one side and see if we can be the party poopers against Barnet Ladies on Thursday – a team looking to clinch promotion if they can get a result, yet one we beat convincingly to deny them a six successive cup on the win.
If we can do it against a side of that quality – we can do it to anybody in the division.
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