An energetic, feisty Palace drew with us on the back of two well-taken penalty kicks. They outshot us, had more corners, and fouled less often, so this was not a case of them grabbing a point against the run of play. It was a game of mistakes and narrow margins, the one shining moment being Xhaka's magnificent free kick from a tight angle. All four goals came from set pieces, three of them from stupid fouls and one off a corner scored when the ball crossed the line by 9mm (and Lacazette's fingers may have lightly brushed the ball first). It was an entertaining game, but not pretty.
I think we all knew that Xhaka at left back was a gamble. The penalty on him is one of those that always piss me off, because Zaha's sole intention was to draw it. But Xhaka cooperated and the whistle blew. Mustafi's was his typical diving in/going to ground for no good reason. Stand up and try to block any shot, Shkodran! And what was Lacazette thinking when with our whole team up and in possession he launched a looping ball to no one in particular towards our goal from the opposition corner? We were one up--kicking it out would have been smarter, knocking it off a Palace player for a corner smarter yet. The two points dropped had a lot to do with that error.
It is no secret that we got a lot of luck in that string of eleven wins. Today, luck wasn't enough, even though we got some: Palace hit the post twice, one of their attackers flopped and on another day it may have been (wrongly) whistled, and Lacazette's hand may have cost us the Auba goal that barely crossed the line. Palace has a right to feel that they were the ones who dropped two points.
If anyone played well in this game, I missed it. Holding and Torreira seemed effective, and Bellerin was pretty dangerous in the first half (I will be checking to see what his issue was). All in all, not a confidence builder.
...
Of course, the midweek game against Sporting may have had something to do with our lackluster performance today. That was not an easy win, but it was important to get the W against our strongest opponent away. If we can beat them at the Emery-ates, we win the group. Even a draw makes us odds-on to win it. It was the first time Sporting lost in Lisbon since Barca beat them more than a year ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment