It has been a while since I penned one of these articles, firstly due to that mysterious Russian hacker and then last week a pesky illness caught me very much off guard.
I am glad to be back and raring to go for the second half of the season which as we all know has not started very well at all. Without going into too much detail, the defeats of the past month have been and gone, and quite frankly, we simply do not need to dwell on them.
What we do need however is to support the boys and the manager through this particularly sticky time and hope results improve starting with Swansea City away this weekend.
I will dissect and discuss the Bournemouth defeat on Tuesday which was a game I managed to get to after being away from Selhurst for far too long. In hindsight, it was not the best game to choose. We were fairly average, and our attacking verve continued to desert.
There are plenty of talking points from the game though and a few of them I want to talk about starting with Wilfried Zaha and his lack of protection from referees.
For anyone that watched the game at the stadium or at home on television (or shall we say a stream), Zaha time and time again got nothing from the referee.
Sitting in row five, I was pretty close to the action and just happened to be close to the travelling supporters. I simply cannot fathom how the official for the night Mike Jones did not give some blatant free kicks in favour of Zaha. Our number eleven’s overall performance was immense, every time he skinned his opposing full back, whether it was on the right or the left flank.
I always thought Bournemouth were quite a tame bunch when it comes to surrounding the referee and the antics we see so often in modern football. Now we know they are not that innocent after all.
Before Zaha even received the ball, Charlie Daniels or Adam Smith were all over him, pulling his shirt and trying to goad the silky winger into something stupid. In the second half their antics nearly paid off when Zaha squared up to Smith when on a booking.
Visiting fans can sing ‘Zaha’s going to cry in a minute’ all they want but that goes down as pure jealousy. I may get some stick for this next comment, but there is not a side in the Premier League that have wingers like we do, and especially not one like Zaha.
Alan Pardew has said it himself, not many players can take people on from a standing start. On Tuesday night Zaha showed just how good he is and also just how good he can be.
The defeat now means Palace have gone seven league games without a victory and five losses in a row, and all of a sudden Twitter has become a horrible place.
Now I love Twitter just as much as the next fan, it is a great tool which has enabled me to promote my work and reach larger audiences but some of the stuff I see, and particularly tweets after the Bournemouth game were just ridiculous.
Of course, I cannot tell you guys what to tweet and post but can I maybe just put some constructive criticism out here. We do not need fans ranting and raving about how poor a player was and how he is not fit to wear the shirt. We do not need it at this time.
We are not stupid, fans know who is not performing to their maximum at the moment. If you are going to make uninformed remarks and frankly stupid, idiotic comments just to try and cause a stir amongst fans, what is the point?
I trust Pardew, some fans might not. I do believe he missed a trick in the transfer window because the squad depth we thought we had at the start of the season is just not there. Our dreams of European football were very premature.
Obviously Newcastle United fans have piped up saying ‘we told you so’, but in all seriousness, Newcastle fans opinions are not worth our time, Palace is not their club. They do not watch Palace every week, but by judging by some of the tweets, they might do just that!
So I urge you, if you can just try to be simple and tweet something that is worth talking about and discussing, because otherwise Palace do not need all the angst at the moment.
We are too good to go down, and I truly believe we will not get relegated despite some people’s opinions. Atop eight finish is achievable but we just have to get a full strength squad out every week.
Keep the faith and continue to support the boys. They really need it at the moment.
