Crystal Palace v Leeds – 7th November 2020

The easiest way to look back on the Palace game would be to paste and copy pretty much what we said after the Leicester defeat last week.

As we said after that, Leeds only know one way of playing. I’m surprised at Marcelo after Leicester because there were a few lessons to be learned there, but it was almost like watching a replay. Leeds did have chances again, but they’re going to continue shipping goals, and when they do they’re coming at an alarming rate.

The biggest problem at Palace was that Leeds couldn’t deal with Wilfried Zaha, and every time he got on the ball he looked like a real threat. He didn’t look like he broke sweat.

When you look at it, we have to find a structure that suits the whole team because we are just too gung-ho. It was like we were chasing the game the whole time. Palace scored four unbelievable goals – Eze’s free-kick was amazing and he looks a real talent. Unusually Luke Ayling struggled defensively, and Liam Cooper and Robin Koch need to start developing a clearer understanding.

Because Bielsa is so tactically sound, people are studying ways to beat Leeds and Roy Hodgson basically said in his post-match that his side take up good defensive positions and knew they had to do that against Leeds – but it was something that Leeds didn’t do themselves, and Palace scored four. I’m not sure the midfield three is enough defensively to keep the goals out. Struijk is a young lad and hopefully he will learn, and he has to get his feet quicker…I’m sure Bielsa will be working on that with him.

Going forward, we look to Klich all the time – he was brilliant for Paddy’s goal – and he’s the one who has the ability, but at the moment it feels like he’s trying to do too much, and with Kalvin out, we are really, really missing him and struggling. When Raphina came on, he did well, but I just can’t get away with the goals we are conceding and what we are looking like defensively.

We can all go on about the hat-trick that Paddy scored, but this is the Premier League and it can bite you on the arse big time. You get beat four at home by Leicester, you know how Palace like to play, and you go there, try and keep the back door shut, and you’d take a horrible 0-0 just to get another point on the board and get some confidence back after shipping four at home.

All that said…we have been a bit unfortunate, never more less than the ridiculous disallowed goal from Patrick. There is no way in the world that goal should have been disallowed. There was no part of his body offside except his arm which was pointing for the pass, and that is the most natural thing in the world to do.. It was a brilliant goal and great play, VAR is killing the game and spoiling it, and who knows, if that has been allowed, everything else might have been rendered null and void because we might have won the bloody game!

Never dull is it folks?