Lonergan 6 Not at fault for goal, couple of smart saves Thompson 6 Steady, tried supporting attacks Lees 7 Looks assured O'Dea 6 Did ok White 4 Headless chicken Townsend 6 Greedy, better when moved to left 2nd half. He's no Gradel though. Clayton 7 Busy, always probing looking for openings Brown 6 Kept things ticking over, lucky to escape a booking Pugh 6 Surprisingly quick, not a midfielder though, better when moved to LB McCormack 8 Good game, dropped deep a few times to try & make things happen Becchio 4 Adios Amigo, shadow of last season, looks lost, either devoid of confidence, unfit, or both. Rightly withdrawn. Subs Snodgrass 8 Great to see him back, took his goal well. Forssell 6 Forced a smart save from Speroni, should have started. Grayson 6 Should have put Nunez on for Brown last 20 minutes when Palace were hanging on, could have nicked a winner. First half hour poor, about five long range efforts way off target, & defence just backed off for their goal. Laid siege to Palace goal 2nd half, better shape to side with Pugh LB, Snods on right & Townsend switched to left. Battled, good approach play but final ball poor. No killer passes against a well organised Palace defence. Also defence coped well with Palace counter attacks. Overall a hard earned point which could so easily have been three with a little more guile & craft, but with Palace packing their defence it's sometimes harder than playing 11 vs 11.
Cheers for the ratings, not being there this helps massively Listened to the game though and Lonergan sounded like he made some fantastic saves in the words of eddie gray Townsend does seem very greedy from the burnley game and the arsenal game as well. He needs to take that aspect of his game out, and his final ball hasn't looked very good. I still claim we need to either buy or loan a striker, a big hold it up becchio style of player who is actually better (keogh or similar). So your MOTM goes to McCormack??
My MOTM goes to the referee, Mr D. Coote 10/10, outstanding performance. Got every decision right. Turned the game with the sending off. Wish we had him every week!
Cheers LiE. I agree that Townsend needs to develop the team player aspect of his game. He's still young & will develop. I think it was O'Dea who failed to close the Palace player down for their goal. The player was in the centre of the pitch was the whole goal to aim at ffs. Heyho, despite being the home side, Lonergan had very little to do otherwise. Not a great result for us, but not too bad.
Boggers, funny that I thought it was O'Dea too till I saw the goal again on FLS & it was more Lees backing off. Maybe a combination of the two CB's not closing down. Can't believe how much space the guy had. Don't know if Brown should have been picking him up & just allowed him to drift.
Good info LiE, sounds on a par with the commentary. Our defence always seems to back off but I think sometimes they're a bit scared of diving into the tackle so they either don't get shown up and skinned, or sent off! Agree with against 10 men comment too. It makes hardly no difference when you're attacking cos most teams revert to 4-4-1 anyway. I would have taken a point probably, but the next six games should really see us pushing on if we have any aspirations, apart from Brum maybe. They could be this seasons late chargers and are on fire at the moment. We shouldn't be scared of the league position either, as long as we're still in touch points wise. MOT
i thought lees was brilliant, but then again he had less threat to deal with with them losing an attacker. lonergan had little to do as we dominated from the sending off onwards. we just lacked the killer ball. looked miles better when snod came on and townsend went to his natural side
How did Snodgrass look? Did he seem like he would be fit enough to start the next game? Against Burnley, Townsend was good on the left beating the right back time and time again. Then against Arsenal he seemed less effective on the right, and it seemed this continued against Palace. If Snodgrass starts on the right, with Townsend on the left, then we'll be good down both flanks. Ipswich at home next weekend. They are terrible, and very fragile defensively, so we should go out attacking and put them on the back foot from the start.
The way I saw it, Palace were 2 on 1 with Lees - what could he do? O'Dea seemed to have been doing something over on the left (no idea if it was rightly or wrongly), and was slow to get back in the middle. Our midfield chasers were well behind the pace. That's the way it looked off the telly, but you didn't get the full picture. Anyone at the game able to clear it up?
Snodgrass looked good, Townsend ineffective on right flank, kept cutting inside onto his preferred left foot. When he switched to left flank was a lot better, taking on the fullback & getting in crosses. These two should cause no end of problems for Ipswich.
Whitejock, when we concede i generally just start to assume that its O'Dear's fault now. I'm normally pretty right in that
the whole central midfield and central defence were to blame. the midfield left runners and the defence backed off too much as a line. piss poor!