I couldn’t get a preview post up, because I was simply too busy doing other stuff, apologies.
Whatever, it didn’t matter as the ref’s decision to pull the game back after Lansbury had scored what seemed a legitimate goal, led to quite a few replies anyway.
Okay, we lost this game, but to be honest, I’m not really bothered about that.
We’ll lose a lot more games this season, without a doubt and the reasons why are much more important than a ref’s decision.
So what went wrong?
Well, if you asked me to rate the players, the only one who would score over 5 would be Heaton, who I’d probably give a 7-8.
I then struggle to rate any other player above a 5/10.
A comment that I don’t think I’ve ever made before, which strikes me as odd in itself.
I can’t put my finger on it, but we got this one totally wrong.
The wingers were totally non existent, our midfielders didn’t get a look in, whether attacking or defending and was Wesley on the pitch?
The fact that John McGinn was equally anonymous today, says it all.
It takes some doing for him to not get into a game.
Unless we give Crystal Palace and Roy Hodgson some proper credit in saying that they totally negated anything we tried to do.
Yes, you can bitch and moan about the goal that wasn’t given, but quite simply, Palace bested us in every way.
We had a bright start, but Palace over-ran us at will for most of the game, because of their pacy attack.
Of course, it didn’t help that we had four bookings on our part, before Palace got their first and that no doubt makes players nervous.
But I have to say that many of those bookings were deserved, if you’re a ref who’s reading everything to the rules.
Which is where things should have been replicated on Palace’s part.
Yet they weren’t.
There was a blatant stamp, that went un-punished very shortly after one of our players had just been booked for the same thing.
How does that work?
I’m moaning about the ref, but it doesn’t matter.
When you’re in the Prem, you have to overcome this sort of stuff, as it’s what happens.
I personally think today was a reality check and a glimpse of what we’re going to see much more of.