Palace Return From North London With Point From Arsenal

The Eagles fought back from going a goal behind early on at the Emirates to score two excellent goals and take a well deserved point.

MATCH INFORMATION

PLAYER RATINGS

UNUSED SUBSTITUTES – 2 Joel WARD, 11 Matheus FRANCA, 17 Nathaniel CLYNE, 30 Matt TURNER, Caleb KPORHA

OPPOSITION LINE-UP

UNUSED SUBSTITUTES – 17 Oleksandr ZINCHENKO, 32 NETO, 37 Nathan BUTLER-OYEDEJI, 44 Jimi GOWER, 45 Jack HENRY-FRANCIS, 46 Ismeal KABIA

TEB VERDICT

A poor early goal to conceded but the Eagles reacted well from then on with a few good opportunities opening up the Arsenal back line. Then came the exquisite equaliser by Eze on the edge of the box from a corner, in off the post.

The hosts got themselves back into the lead just before the break which was helped along by a slight deflection off the boot of Lacroix. But the visitors went on the attack once again in reaction and on the balance of play perhaps unlucky to be down at the interval.

The second half panned out with Palace defending well and frustrating the hosts. Enter stage left, Jean-Philippe Mateta who having only been on the pitch a couple of minutes took advantage of poor defending with a subline goal.

It could well have been so much better as Mateta created a chance for Sarr who was a fraction away from sending the ball into the bottom corner of the net.

Overall, a positive away performance and two excellent goals to go into the FA Cup semi-final with after a bit of rocky form of late.

Notable individual performances by Mateta from the bench, Daniel Munoz, and Ebere Eze. The much-criticised Daichi Kamada put in a solid showing in midfield.

POST GAME QUOTES

OLIVER GLASNER

“Excellent. Credit to the players. The reaction to recent results was amazing today. I’m proud of what the players showed. We scored amazing goals. I watched many Arsenal games and I can’t remember a team with as many clear chances as we had.

We want to show our identity and personality. It’s important to keep this energy and confidence for the semi-final on Saturday. It was not our goal to decide the title, it was our goal to win the game. I think a draw is a very good result. More important is the performance. We are back on the track. That’s what we need.”

JEAN-PHILIPPE MATETA

“When I started on the bench, I could see David Raya was very high up the pitch. So I knew if I won the ball I could try, so I did and scored. It is one of the best goals of my career. I thought it hit the crossbar but thankfully it was in!

We have struggled for the last three games but we just listened to the gaffer and today was a good game for us.”

MIKEL ARTETA

“We are disappointed with the result and performance. We didn’t find enough consistency in actions to dominate the game. It’s part of football and cost us two points. It can be difficult. In many aspects of the game we should have done better today.

“We require the consistency. Today they were very organised and deserved credit. We have to do much better. We have the most important game of the season in six games. We need to get our energy back.”

MATCH STATISTICS

UPCOMING FIXTURES