Crystal Palace vs. Tottenham match thread

[Hrolf The Ganger]

Here's a question. Could the club have vetoed Sarr's move to play in AFCON given his value to the first team, fixture congestion, lack of team depth and mounting injuries? Sarr's absence for Palace is so telling at present.

Yeah, if you want no foreign player to sign for you.

 

[Glazier#1]

They were very much set piece situations - Lacroix being in the opposition six yard box is pretty telling.

In both cases the chances may not have come directly from the set piece, but a second phase of the situation, but they’re clearly not at all open play chances which is what I’m talking about.

He always does at corners.

 

[Pete53]

Its extremely disappointing how such a talented player is not allowed to work through his mistakes. He is instead taken off embarrassingly at half time just absolutely destroying his confidence. Its really poor man managment. I really think if we have a change of manager and the manager believes in Romain he could be an absolute star for us

I do feel a bit sorry for him. I remember him player a blinder in the first half against Wolves in our last game at home 2024 2025. But then he had the ignominy of his substitution against Liverpool in the final game and again against Millwall this season (?). Since then he has been a bench warmer.

Last night you could that he was not confident enough to play his natural game, and took the safe way out of making short passes to the nearest player.

 

[OneStevePerrin]

I do feel a bit sorry for him. I remember him player a blinder in the first half against Wolves in our last game at home 2024 2025. But then he had the ignominy of his substitution against Liverpool in the final game and again against Millwall this season (?). Since then he has been a bench warmer.

Last night you could that he was not confident enough to play his natural game, and took the safe way out of making short passes to the nearest player.

I got the impression he was told to stay / hog the right hand side. Complete waste of him in my opinion. Needs to be in and around the box but never got near it yesterday :-(

 

[Painter]

Here's a question. Could the club have vetoed Sarr's move to play in AFCON given his value to the first team, fixture congestion, lack of team depth and mounting injuries? Sarr's absence for Palace is so telling at present.

Simple answer no. Sunderland have 6 first team players lost to AFCON.

 

[Sportyteacher]

Spurs bringing on Brendan Johnson as sub for the final throes of the match really felt like a 'come and buy him' gesture from White Hart Lane.

 

[Willo]

To be truthful I for one was not impressed by Tottenham and they were there for the taking.
Missed chances were our downfall yet again.
Their goal from the set-piece was a very poor goal to concede.Three headers won in the box and a player left unmarked in a central position to head home.

 

[Hrolf The Ganger]

To be truthful I for one was not impressed by Tottenham and they were there for the taking.
Missed chances were our downfall yet again.
Their goal from the set-piece was a very poor goal to concede.Three headers won in the box and a player left unmarked in a central position to head home.

We had the vast majority of the game and yet spurs managed to score, have two goals disallowed and hit the post in as many chances.

We were better than them with four big players missing and yet could not hit the back of the net. Our current problem in a nutshell.
Spurs have rarely been this bad, and we couldn't even get a point at home.

Unfortunately, this won't change until Sarr and Munoz return, and we sign another striker.

 

[Paul Salvage]

We had the vast majority of the game and yet spurs managed to score, have two goals disallowed and hit the post in as many chances.

We were better than them with four big players missing and yet could not hit the back of the net. Our current problem in a nutshell.
Spurs have rarely been this bad, and we couldn't even get a point at home.

Unfortunately, this won't change until Sarr and Munoz return, and we sign another striker.

I agree that with the missing players we are struggling, but to not try something different with the players available is maddening. The current system will not work so as they say “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
I was not a Hodgson fan as his football was depressing as hell but I’m sure he could have ground out a few points during this slump by being more pragmatic.

 

[doombear]

Simple answer no. Sunderland have 6 first team players lost to AFCON.

and are still able to pick up points.

 

[BigGcpfc]

Going on our inability to score we are going to need 14 0-0 draws to confirm our premiership status.

 

[Uphill]

Many agree we are missing players, especially Eze.
As he is not getting to start or even to come on as a sub at the moment how about asking
Arsenal if we can have him back on loan?

I also noticed that W. Zaha came on as a sub for Ivory Coast last night - how about seeing if we can loan him from Charlotte until their season resumes?

Just saying .....

 

[ex hibitionist]

there's some real cobblers being written here, for one, Mateta didn't play that badly at all the other night esp first half, hold up play, strength, tricking his way past defenders in tight situations, but he mis-timed his jump for the header assisted by Lacroix and it hit the back of his head, he got high enough but at the wrong moment. We do need additions ... but Eze and Zaha? You cannot be serious man!😡 And you can question Glasner's judgement if you like, it is your right, but all this 'why doesn't he play four at the back, why doesn't he Esse this and Uche that, and Pino is rubbish' ... come on, Kamada was rubbish for 30 games last season and some posters still can't admit that Glasner was right all along and he's now a key player. Our squad is too small to cope with our schedule and it is hampering our performances and results though we still pull out great efforts like Fulham and Arsenal away. Just be patient and blame the size of our squad for our current failings, not Glasner's tactics or individual players, if you do that you are just plain missing it.

 

[kevlee]

People saying we need to buy a new striker? We’ve just bought one for £30m and he isn’t very good. Against Spurs he was terrible.
We do have a billionaire co-owner and so all this we have no money isn’t accurate. The clubs owners have lots of money. They just don’t want to invest in the club. We were better off with Textor.
And from what I have seen from Esse, he is way off the required level and should be loaned out to the Championship.

 

[Caterham]

Here's a question. Could the club have vetoed Sarr's move to play in AFCON given his value to the first team, fixture congestion, lack of team depth and mounting injuries? Sarr's absence for Palace is so telling at present.

I would imagine that the only way you would manage to do that would be to include it in the original contract so that at that point its up to the player whether he signs or doesn't, trying to include it later sounds problematic - and as another poster pointed out it wouldn't do the recruitment initiative any favours, especially in a club looking to recruit players on the younger side who's career is more in an upward trajectory who we would hope would have some serious sell on value.

Once a player becomes an international it can add serious value to their transfer price tag.

Wasnt there a story couple years ago about a manager not signing (or not wanting to sign) African internationals because the club he was at couldn't afford a bigger squad & he didn't want to risk losing several key players for AFCON ? (Or they already had a bunch of African Internationals & he didnt want to add to the problem by buying more ?)

 

[NEILLO]

My pre match prediction was a 0-0 draw. I just couldn't envisage either side scoring.

Confidence in the final third is low. Players wanting an extra touch, reluctant to shoot and making wrong decisions. At times like this you hope that the defence can keep things tight and at least keep the opposition out. Sadly that's not happening either.

Glasner gets the plaudits when we win so he must accept responsibility when we don't. So I get the criticism levelled at him when we results don't go our way. BUT - did anyone really think that we went into this season with a squad that had the required strength in depth to be competitive across four competitions ? What we are experiencing now was entirely predictable but the question is was it preventable ??

It seems that there is no alignment between Parish and Glasner in terms of ambition. Just my opinion but I think the Guehi saga could have made Glasners mind up in terms of extending his contract.

Just when I thought this club had finally achieved something and could build for further success, instead we had the UEFA debacle, a change in ownership structure and a passive transfer window.

Back to the Spurs game, and similar to the United match, we lost to a bang average team. No lack of effort from the players, but to me they looked stale. My hope is that the likes of Munoz and Sarr will quickly settle back in and that we get some quality reinforcements in January.

 

[Uphill]

there's some real cobblers being written here, for one, Mateta didn't play that badly at all the other night esp first half, hold up play, strength, tricking his way past defenders in tight situations, but he mis-timed his jump for the header assisted by Lacroix and it hit the back of his head, he got high enough but at the wrong moment. We do need additions ... but Eze and Zaha? You cannot be serious man!😡 And you can question Glasner's judgement if you like, it is your right, but all this 'why doesn't he play four at the back, why doesn't he Esse this and Uche that, and Pino is rubbish' ... come on, Kamada was rubbish for 30 games last season and some posters still can't admit that Glasner was right all along and he's now a key player. Our squad is too small to cope with our schedule and it is hampering our performances and results though we still pull out great efforts like Fulham and Arsenal away. Just be patient and blame the size of our squad for our current failings, not Glasner's tactics or individual players, if you do that you are just plain missing it.

... but Eze and Zaha? You cannot be serious man!
The point I was making was that both Eze and Zaha could score goals
We need a temporary solution and waiting for Sarr's return from Afcon will not necessarily cure the problem.

 

[park the bus]

... but Eze and Zaha? You cannot be serious man!
The point I was making was that both Eze and Zaha could score goals
We need a temporary solution and waiting for Sarr's return from Afcon will not necessarily cure the problem.

Stop living in the past. Eze is an Arsenal player and Zaha is washed up, a divisive personality when we need unity.

 

[NMPalace]

A games pile up and injuries have cost us. But there is nothing anyone can do about that. There is certainly a very good case for the contention that the squad is lacking in the necessary quality. We should be scoring more without a doubt - what a difference Calvert-Lewin or Watkins would make for example.

the games pile up was always going to happen and the Dec period could have been predicted months ago with conf league and league cup QF scheduled for the same week.
Not saying i would have wanted Palace to do it but Liverpool clearly selected a very weak side against us in the league cup to avoid additional games (or play them with the very weakened team if they had won the previous round).

In terms of injuries we have actually been quite lucky this season. Most teams have 2 or 3 regulars out at periods during the season so an injury to a 'core' player such as Munoz was always going to happen. Kamada is bad timing with Sarr at the Afcon but he is never the first name on the team sheet. Other than that we have had very few injuries and i think 8 or so of the starters have played almost every game.

Even with Sarr's absence , he is our only player at the AFCON and many teams have more - Man U 3, including 2 starters, Sunderland 6 including 3 starters etc. We play Fulham next who have 3 missing, so we can hardly use that as an excuse.

On the whole i thought we played ok against Spurs. We had a few decent chances (Hughes shot, Mateta header and perhaps the Lacriox header was the best) yet rarely tested their goalie.

The front 3 are so important to us yet since Sarr left Pino, who was improving, has been poor and the Sarr replacement is causing problematic. Devenny, who reminds me of a Simon Rodger type player, is a trier and a good squad player, but not prem standard IMHO.
This combined with JP looking off the pace has meant the goals have dried up, and we weren't big scorers previously.

The bedrock of the team is our defence and this is now looking very suspect. We look clueless at defending set pieces and it seems odd that someone as tall as Mateta is put on the post when smaller players such as Pino or Wharton are not.

Spurs rarely threatened yet in addition to the goal they had 2 marginal 'goals' disallowed by VAR, hot the post and Hendo made a great save, albeit the last 2 chances were late in the game.

So all in all worrying times.

We just need a 1-0 win the settle the nerves. I am not looking forward to Newcastle away as their pace and energy will cause us all sorts of problems.

 

[Willo]

the games pile up was always going to happen and the Dec period could have been predicted months ago with conf league and league cup QF scheduled for the same week.
Not saying i would have wanted Palace to do it but Liverpool clearly selected a very weak side against us in the league cup to avoid additional games (or play them with the very weakened team if they had won the previous round).

In terms of injuries we have actually been quite lucky this season. Most teams have 2 or 3 regulars out at periods during the season so an injury to a 'core' player such as Munoz was always going to happen. Kamada is bad timing with Sarr at the Afcon but he is never the first name on the team sheet. Other than that we have had very few injuries and i think 8 or so of the starters have played almost every game.

Even with Sarr's absence , he is our only player at the AFCON and many teams have more - Man U 3, including 2 starters, Sunderland 6 including 3 starters etc. We play Fulham next who have 3 missing, so we can hardly use that as an excuse.

On the whole i thought we played ok against Spurs. We had a few decent chances (Hughes shot, Mateta header and perhaps the Lacriox header was the best) yet rarely tested their goalie.

The front 3 are so important to us yet since Sarr left Pino, who was improving, has been poor and the Sarr replacement is causing problematic. Devenny, who reminds me of a Simon Rodger type player, is a trier and a good squad player, but not prem standard IMHO.
This combined with JP looking off the pace has meant the goals have dried up, and we weren't big scorers previously.

The bedrock of the team is our defence and this is now looking very suspect. We look clueless at defending set pieces and it seems odd that someone as tall as Mateta is put on the post when smaller players such as Pino or Wharton are not.

Spurs rarely threatened yet in addition to the goal they had 2 marginal 'goals' disallowed by VAR, hot the post and Hendo made a great save, albeit the last 2 chances were late in the game.

So all in all worrying times.

We just need a 1-0 win the settle the nerves. I am not looking forward to Newcastle away as their pace and energy will cause us all sorts of problems.

Having a tall player in the six-yard box guarding the near post at corners is a common tactic and was known as the 'Drogba position'.