Eze Fires Palace To Victory After Poor Start Against Leeds

Three points looked highly unlikely after such a terrible start but Palace dug in and battling qualities to come back and defeat an energetic Leeds side who failed to capitalise on taking an early lead.

TIME/ DATE/ VENUE

• 2pm
• 9^th October 2022
• Selhurst Park, Holmesdale Road, London SE25 6PU

RESULT

Crystal Palace 2-1 Leeds United

PLAYER RATINGS

UNUSED SUBSTITUTES – 5 James TOMKINS, 21 Sam JOHNSTONE, 23 Malcolm EBIOWEI, 44 Jairo RIEDEWALD, 45 John-Kymani Gordon

OPPOSITION LINE-UP

UNSED SUBSTITUTES – 13 Kristoffer KLAESSON, 14 Deigo LLORENTE, 18 Darko GYABI, 29 Wilfried GNONTO, 42 Sam GREENWOOD,

TEB VERDICT

There was no excuse for such a poor start to this game, just like there was no excuses not to start picking up points after such a tough start to the season. But Palace fought back from going a goal down early and showed something a little different in this game. The grit and determination to get back into this match was impressive mid one of those performances where nothing really came off. Edouard grabbed his second goal in as many games while Eze took the plaudits by stepping up to score a brilliant match winner.

There will be better performances so it was pleasing to get all three points when we did look a little off colour. It was great to have Andersen back with star turns by both Edouard and Ayew.

BOB’S POINT OF VIEW

Bob White was a coach at Palace under the tenure of Steve Coppell and Alan Smith and will be sharing his point of view each week in our review article.

“After a lethargic first half where we could have easily been 2-0 down, we fortunately went in to the interval at 1-1. A defence which had been on the whole reliable this season looked so disjointed and ill at ease in every Leeds attack. All credit to Vieira and staff for ensuring a radical change in our whole approach for the second half. The earlier tactical switch before half-time by bringing Ayew inside and Olise wide was undoubtedly helped by every player being more proactive in regaining possession quicker and then showing more composure in possession of the ball.

Our defence also looked more organised and worked more effectively as a unit to reduce the space Leeds could exploit in the final third. Although a scrappy performance was decided by a high quality assist by Zaha and finish by Eze, it was the overall result which mattered most. It may not have been a must win match but we were at the start of a sequence of games where we required a decent points return. Hopefully we can begin to look upwards again with the confidence a win can bring to the whole squad.

My man of the match award goes to Ayew who is so often underrated in the contribution he makes to the effective functioning of our play both defensively and offensively.”

POST GAME QUOTES

PATRICK VIEIRA – “It’s a good win – we needed that. It wasn’t pretty but we needed some different ingredients from the last couple of games. Today we worked hard, we rolled up our sleeves and competed and in the end we scored a goal. It’s good for us. We wanted to play from the back and the way they were pressing made it really difficult for us. In the first half-an-hour our decision-making from the back wasn’t the best and we put ourselves into difficulties. We lost confidence and made wrong decisions but credit to the players, going 1-0 down and to fight back and get the win. They worked really well and fully deserved to get that. The last couple of games we didn’t get what we deserved but today was a good win for us.”

JESSE MARSCH – “In general, the first half was very good from us, one of our best halves of football. We were on top of the game and the shame was we weren’t able to manage the game better to get into half-time in the lead. We should have been 2-0 up at least. In the end it hurts because you walk away with nothing, but it is the step in the right direction. I’m really positive about our group. We’re young, we need to keep maturing, we need to keep understanding how to manage games in this league.”

MATCH STATISTICS

POSITION IN THE TABLE

UPCOMING FIXTURES

15/10/22 Leicester City (a) – Premier League (12.30pm)

18/10/22 Wolves (h) – Premier League (8.15pm)

22/10/22 Everton (a) – Premier League (3pm)