I think Fathi deserves a decent go - all of his play looked excellent, the cut back near the end was top class, and his purposeful running with the ball from midfield is very exciting to watch. Palace played 4 3 3, but with their fullbacks pushing on as much as possible when they had the ball. When they did their central midfielder with long hair dropped back to make a 3 4 3 - a great way to have 3 at the back when attacking, which is probably all you need 95% of the time in the championship! Very fluid front three, with both Zaha and obviously Phillips looking dangerous. They simply outplayed us in midfield this way. The gap between our back 7 (sort of! - back 5 meyler and quinn) and the front three was too big. Koren even ended up dropping back at times making the situation worse. Basically imvho we were turned over by Ian Holloway. Stockdale was shaky, as he has been a few times recently - certainly at Bolton. The officiating made the game so scrappy in the first half which didn't help in that it stopped us being able to get the ball down and circulate it the way we do, but the best team won. We saw the bad side of Meyler - the push for the penalty looked stupid from where I was. He does foul a lot. I think that helped the ref get into his blow for everything sort of stride first half. Lost interest in what they were doing late on with the substitutions. Edit - someone told me Swanny said they were playing a 5 man midfield. They weren't. They were doing what I say above!
