No news from Ranieri, or the Club, on our casualty list. Think we can take it that Schurrle has joined Mawson and (the not quite fit yet) Anguissa. The manager specifically mentioned Bryan's cross to Mitrovic in his press conference and perversely left the impression that Joe might be out as well. The news that Palace and Southampton had drawn the other night caused a welcome cheer. The farcical sending off of Zaha however, brought on a ROAR of Biblical proportions. Only that day I'd been thinking (that is, seriously worrying) about the havoc he'd cause down our right side. Relief is one thing but complacency would be very dangerous. That wily old fox in the Palace dugout will have plotted how to combat losing his star man. Reckon he'll put the pacy Sclupp high on the left, with left back Van Aanholt bombing up behind him. Believe Roy will also bring back Hennessey in goal for the dodgy Speroni ... more's the pity. Unknowns are whether he sees a place for the recovered Benteke or whether to take a risk and push new boy Batshuayi straight in. Would be pretty Fulhamish if he scored on his debut! What a difference 45 minutes can make. But, as the old cliche goes, 'you're only as good as your next game'. Ranieri has to not only motivate his players for this one, he has to get his selection spot on. That doesn't mean automatically ditching his 5-at-the-back but playing that formation against a team set up like Palace, would be sheer folly. His priority has to be to get control of the midfield and pack it with creativity. No surprise then if we see the team that finished the game on Tuesday night. [Can't see our new boy Håvard Nordtveit being ready for a pivotal role in a key match like this.] ..................................Rico... ...Christie....Odoi...LeMarchand..R Sessegnon.. ...............................Chambers.... .........Vietto.....Cairney.......Seri......Babel.... .............................Mitrovic.... To be honest the crunch will be whether the players can motivate themselves. We need to see them wanting the ball and the movement off the ball which we saw on Tuesday. The one we can be confident who'll have his dander up is of course Mitro. Will be interesting to see if he carries the captain's armband.
The man in charge today is Michael Oliver. please log in to view this image Will Oliver have an axe to grind in this game between his Newcastle's relegation rivals? We've seen him only the once this season - the 3-2 win against Southampton at the Cottage at end of November. Palace have seen him four times already. The kind of interesting thing are penalty awards. We're fairly used to Palace 'winning' a fair number. However, Oliver's record is 3 for, 5 against. For the record, he's issued 67 yellow and 5 reds in his 22 Premiership games so far.
I wish now I was going today but after a number of disappointing away results I decided to give it a miss. Hopefully the midweek game has given us confidence. Mitrovic will be well looked after, we need a few people to cause distractions. Having Kouyate and Zahah out can only be a plus for us. We gave Palace a good game at the Cottage at the beginning of the season, they are no better than us. COYW - Roll on gentleman Jim.
Dread to think what the score might've been had their best player not been suspended Terrible stuff after such an encouraging result midweek.
Can't imagine what that team selection said to the players. Apart from that, it beggars belief that Ranieri played not to lose rather than trying to win. Palace were shocking yet we contrived to be worse - all Fluff and not even any Puff. Zero shots on target. And apart from that, how is it possible to play a player whose loan you wanted to cancel? And who only does step overs when you does come on and demonstrates exactly why you wanted rid. And apart from that, utter shambles within the hierarchy.
Looking at our upcoming fixtures, Man Utd(H) West Ham(A) Southampton(A), if we dont get at least 4 points (really we need 6!) then we are gone. Our run of fixtures after these are nothing short of ridiculous and will need to either get really good(unlikely) or really lucky to pick up points from them.
