After
a glorious undefeated two-and-a-half weeks since our last game, comes the visit
of Crystal Palace to St Mary’s. In recent years has gone by, a game against
Palace was always be seen as an opportunity for three points because even if
they were better than us in any given season, they were never that much better
and there was always the opportunity for JWP to get under Wilfred Zaha’s skin
And for Palace not to perform. How things have changed. It would be a major
shock if Saints do anything other than lose to Palace today with the relevant
trajectories of the two clubs. Since they got over their dodgy start the season,
Palace have been in excellent form and have won their last six away games
without conceding a goal. Saints have a similar streak in home games but we’ve
lost the fucking lot usually, so law will be working down on this game and
predicting a Saints win but somehow, I don’t think so.

Palace’s recovery in the second half of the season has coincided with an FA Cup
run which on Saturday saw them reach the semi-final at the expense of Fulham.
It was a game where Palace didn’t have much possession but when they got some,
they were deadly with it with Eze, fresh from scoring his first goal for
England a few days before, scoring a brilliant first goal which showed Palace
being everything that we are not – direct, incisive and with players with the
ability to go past people and having a bit of that ‘end product’ thing never
goes amiss. The front three of Eze, Sarr and Mateta are the envy of most in the
league and you would be hard pressed to find a better front three much better, anywhere
in the division and there are some of the super league clubs who would
certainly be better if they had those three Palace attackers instead of what
they got.  I’m looking at you Spurs, Manchester
United, Chelsea and probably even Arsenal.

It’s not just the attack though. The midfield boasts the excellent pairing of
Jefferson Lerma and Adam Walton who is surely destined to go on and have a long
England career. At the back they have current England International Mark Guehi
and Dean Henderson in goal is not too shabby either. They will face a summer of
vultures circling for their top players and it has to be remembered that they
lost Michael Olise to Bayern Munich last summer but have still thrived. They
are the perfect example of doing it right.

Meanwhile, in our camp, Ivan Juric highlighted the importance in his pre-match
press conference of not finishing as the worst Premier League team of all time.
Talk about lofty ambitions. Well Ivan, if you are as fucking woeful as you have
been so far, then I’d say it’s a game on.  Infuriatingly, he also repeated the mantra
that you have to decide on a style of play and then sign players accordingly.
Yeah, that’s the long-term view you fucking arsehole but that doesn’t really
work if you can’t sign any players and you come into the team mid-season. Every
time he opens his mouth, I just want him to shut the fuck up.  Again I’m pondering the age old adage that the
manager sets the tone for the team and the team reflects the managers
personality. That probably explains why the current state of our team is “meh”.

More usefully he did give a fitness update and Will Smallbone is out but James
Bree, Jan Bednarek and THB are all fit and available. I have in my mind an
eleven for this game and a formation and I think that the further that we
deviate from that, the worse we will be. Needless to say, my formation has a
striker in it, it doesn’t have a back three and it doesn’t contain James Bree
or any of the other painfully Championship players that we have littered around
the squad.

A highlight of many a recent Saints experience is the team announcement, when
you can usually decide if there’s going to be any chance of anything positive
happening.  Having had the long break,
the question was if Ivan Juric had spent the time actually learning anything
about his players and there was a cautious thumbs up, when the eleven names
became apparent.  The headline for me was
Flynn Downes starting alongside Lesley Ugochukwu, which gave hope that the
midfield wouldn’t be shit.  Full backs on
the correct sides in KWP and Manning and praise the lord above (if you believe
in all that), a striker in Tall Paul.

Away we go in front of a relatively sparse crowd.  There are so many visible gaps in all four
stands as the combination of an evening kick-off and being shite have made up a
lot of peoples minds for them.  Palace work
the ball out to Mitchell on the left and he fizzes one into Mateta, who spins
past Bednarek and accelerates into space and from 20 yards he fires it it over
Ramsdale and we are collectively waiting for the net to bulge… but it hits the
bar and bounces down. Fuck me that was close and that would’ve shredded the
atmosphere at a stroke.

We begin to grow into the game soon after and Tall Paul holds it up for KWP to burst
through the middle but he can’t get a shot away and the ball bounces out to Big
Les, who runs at the edge of the box and it pings around a bit before Les lays
it back to Fernandes whose shot deflects over for a corner. positive stuff.  Ok, it’s just a corner but we had four
players in the box.

Twenty minutes and Fernandes finds Downes and some lovely one touch between THB
Downes and Fernandes and the one we desperately want to keep next year, gets
his head up and curls a lovely cross onto the forehead of the big man and Tall
Paul heads powerfully down in Henderson can only help it into the net. Fuck me,
we are winning. The Northam are absolutely on fire with their chants of “We are
staying up”, which drew a generous round of applause from the Palace fans as we
fly up the ‘As It Stands’ table and we’re now just the 17 points adrift.

The Palace response is for Eze to skip across the pitch to the right and find
Clyne and his low ball into Mateta sees the big man spin once more and fire in
a shot through two defenders and Ramsdale seems to twist in mid-air and pulls
off a tremendous safe down low to his left.

Saints finish the half the stronger though as THB chips it down the right wing
to where Guehi gets there before Fernandes but the England man fucks up and
plays a shit ball across towards Lacroix, but Tall Paul tries to take it first
time and drags it wide.

KWP steps in an wins a  tackle to allow
Fernandes to break through midfield and he drops his shoulder and is gone past Lerma
and Wharton before finding KWP, who has continued his run and his low ball
across is too far in front of Tall Paul. The ball eventually comes back in from
Sulemana and THB and KWP get each other’s way and Palace clear it.  The attacking intensity has been there today
for more or less the first time this season. 
Multiple players involved in build-ups and looking to be positive.

Half time and that was decent.  No
complaints and thoughts turn to the second half and I just hope that we keep
this eleven on the pitch for as long as possible as virtually any substitution
is going to weaken things, especially in midfield where Downes and Big Les have
been superb and the reason why Palace have looked disjointed.  Eze and Sarr have been anonymous and Mateta’s
strength and ability to turn past defenders has really been the only threat.

We try and get on the front foot in the second half and then Sulamana gives the
ball away in embarrassing fashion, allowing Sarr to sprint forward and find Eze
on the left, but he drags his shot into the side netting.  Sarr has come to life and Clyne finds some
space and plays a lovely ball in behind to pick up Sarr’s run but Stephens
slides in to execute a perfect tackle to win the ball and not give away a
penalty despite Sarr beating the ground in frustration. Brilliant tackle.

Subs are going to be key in the second half and Glasner blinks first with a
triple sub, which includes Nketiah coming on for Mateta, which should on the
face of it, be a good thing for us.  We then
give ourselves some work to do and give the Palace sub a chance, as a terrible
back passed by Bednarek is short and Ramsdale has to come flying out at the
feet of Nketiah and gets trodden on for his efforts as the ball deflects away
for a corner.  Another Palace break and
Downes hauls down Eze at the third attempts about thirty yards out and picks up
a yellow card and a two-game ban for ten yellows.  Shit. 
Of more immediate concern is the free kick but Eze is having a beast of
a game and launches it high into the Chapel.

Twenty to go and Big Les is limping and Aribo is on, and the difference is alarming
as Joe fails to get to the pace of the game at all and we now look under more
pressure.  Manning goes down injured ten
minutes later and Welington is on and Juric removes the pace of Sulemana to
bring Dibling on and move Fernandes to the left.  The removal of Sulemana sems to bring more
pressure as Palace now have no threat in behind to worry about. 

In truth though, despite having more possession now, Palace don’t really look a
threat and I’m looking to the side to see how many minutes are to be added as
we reach two minutes to go.  There’s a
collective gasp as ‘8’ is displayed but to be fair, we’ve been wasting time for
thirty minutes so I’m not shocked by that number.

So, ten minutes total left to be played and Ivan feels to need to make more
changes. Tall Paul has hit the deck and needs to go off and he has replaced
with Cameron Archer but the other one just gives me the shits as Flynn Downes,
who has been far and away our best player and the reason why we have looked
defensively solid, is going off to re-replaced by the worst defender in the
squad, Yuki Sugawara. There then follows a few seconds of carnage as Yuki tries
to explain to everybody where they’re supposed to be and the upshot is that
Fernandes has dropped back into midfield and Yuki is on the left wing because…
I don’t fucking know why.

It takes all of three minutes. Lerma launches in a long throw from our right
and THB heads up in the air and then wins the second challenge to head it back
to Lerma.  No one really closes him down
and he crosses it in and substitute Franca has got himself free to flick a
header inside Ramsdale‘s near post.  Fucks
sake.  My first instinct was that he
scored from exactly the area where Downes would’ve been defending.

Now it’s just a case of whether we’ll lose or not and Dibling gives the ball
away in the right back area and Palace work across the top of the box and
Nketiah turns and smashes a shot narrowly over the bar. Fucking hell that
looked a lot closer than it actually was. 
Saints are still trying to win it and there’s one long or throw from THB
which is headed away and that’s the end of it.

Final whistle and a point at home. Fucking annoying that it isn’t three, but we
would all have taken a point, probably even at half-time. There was a lot that
was good about the performance today with Juric employing common sense when
picking his team and doing the obvious , namely picking two central midfielders
who can both run, tackle and drive the team forward. It was also balanced with KWP
on the right and Manning on the left and the returning Jack Stephens gave us
the back three from the playoffs from last year so everyone knew what they were
doing.  Oh yes, and we had a striker.  

Consequently, we started well and after the narrow escape with Mateta hitting
the bar after two minutes, we were a better side for the vast majority of the
first half, causing Palace constant problems and eventually taking the lead
with Tall Paul’s header. That’s why you pick a striker.  The second half and the fact that it’s now 25
points lost from winning positions, are  illustrations of the fact that even if we get
the starting XI more or less right, the substitutes will always kill it and so
we should make as few as possible.  Big Les
had to come off but his replacement Joe Aribo didn’t get to the pace of the
game at all and was a passenger lumbering around in midfield. Suddenly the snap
and the pace of the midfield was not quite there with Flynn Downes left to do
it on his own. Welington for Manning didn’t make things any weaker but taking
Sulemana off for Dibling was a strange one because it took away an outlet and
with no pace up front, Palace could step up and also, Tyler does not suit a
team trying to play quickly on the break.  Cameron Archer for Tall Paul had to happen
because Paul was knackered, but I’m really struggling with the substitution of Downes. 

Flynn was having a great game and he’s banned for the next two games as he’s
got ten yellows, and he was still standing up and doing his job so did he
really need to come off?  Sugawara coming
on and swapping players about and what do you know, an unmarked player in the middle,
1-1.  Juric still doesn’t seem to get
that we need runners / tacklers in midfield and he left us for twelve minutes
with the pairing of the non-running, tracking or tackling Arrbo and Fernandes,
whose strengths certainly lie elsewhere. The area that Downes had been
defending on set pieces, just in front of the front post was where the
equaliser came from because it was someone else’s job after he went off. In the
post-match press conference Juric said that Downes had to come off because of
injury.  We’ve got no way of knowing of
course but I’m not convinced.  What
exactly was he saving him for?

Apart from Flynn, who gave the kind of performance that we were hoping he would
produce every week when we signed him, there were also excellent contributions
from all of the back three with Jack Stephens being the standout. The challenge
for Jack will be putting together a run of form to keep him in the side because
that’s always been his problem in the past. Capable of the odd good game but
never really capable of stringing a run of games together. Bednarek had a
couple of dodgy moments on his first game back but was very combative with Mateta
and THB was solid also, though he will probably think he should’ve done better
with the initial header before Palace scored.  KWP had an excellent game on the right hand
side, digging in strongly defensively and driving forward well. We are
certainly going to miss him when he goes. Big Les in midfield had an excellent
game and seemed to feed off the energy of having Downes next to him.  He won’t make it at Chelsea of course because
it’s fairly impossible to do so when you’re competing for a place in a midfield
that has two £100 million players and a £50 million player.  I expect to see Big Les at another Premier
League club next season and Palace would actually be a good destination for
him.

I was talking about doing the obvious thing in relation to the midfield and another
obvious obvious thing was playing Tall Paul up front. Yes, he looks clumsy at
times and looks like the brain is not sending the signals quickly enough to his
feet, but say what you like, it’s four goals in nine games for the big man now
which is more than Adam Armstrong has ever scored in a Premier League season
and is a very impressive statistic when playing up top on your own in a team as
bad as us.

Having had a whole load of time since the last game, the next one away at Spurs
comes round very quickly on Sunday. With Wolves playing at Ipswich on Saturday,
we could well be mathematically relegated on Sunday if we lose. Hopefully we
can take the positives from today into the rest of the season and hopefully Juric
won’t deviate too much from the tactics and the team that played today. I
expect he will though.

Up the fucking Saints.