Palace Kick Off Season With Point At Chelsea

The Eagles begun the new campaign with a good point away at Chelsea on a hot Sunday afternoon in West London, which continues a ten game unbeaten run against top opposition and two trophies.

MATCH INFORMATION

PLAYER RATINGS

UNUSED SUBSTITUTES – 17 Nathaniel CLYNE, 21 Romain ESSE, 22 Odsonne EDOUARD, 24 Borna SOSA, 44 Walter BENITEZ, 49 JEURUN RAK-SAKYI, 59 Rio CARDINES

UNUSED SUBSTITUTES – 12 Filip JORGENSEN, 14 Dario ESSUGO, 21 Jorrel HATO, 29 Wesley FOFANA, 32 Tyrique GEORGE

POST GAME QUOTES

OLIVER GLASNER

“I’m very pleased with the performance. I think just at the end, we lost the ball too quickly and gave them two or three chances, but the defensive work was excellent, the players did a great job. I’m always talking about progress – last year we had a disallowed free kick at Brentford and we lost this year, we had a disallowed free kick and we drew! So, the first step is the right one.”

ENZO MARESCA

“They played about eight games, we played just two so we tried our best. We didn’t lose a clean sheet. When they scored, I didn’t see that but when they reviewed it, I saw that it was a foul.”

MATCH STATISTICS

TEB VERDICT

The start of a brand-new season but we are still talking about the same poor officiating, this time by the Palace nemesis.

As Oliver Glasner said in his post-match comments, a draw was a fair result and you could not argue with that too much. It was an impressive away performance from the Eagles to kick off the new campaign and they could well have ended up with all three points.

The lack of changes by Glasner does point towards his strong starting eleven but perhaps not quite trusting the quality on the bench at his disposal. Hopefully now that the European debacle has been done and dusted, the board will dig deep to get some signing across the line before the window closes, regardless of whether Eze goes to Spurs.

Take nothing away from this result, walking away from Stamford Bridge having taken a point off the newly crowned World Champions and a side that will surely challenge for the title this season, is a pleasing start.

It remains to be see whether that will be the last we see Eze in a Palace shirt, but it has certainly been a pleasure to put it mildly. Hopefully we will see him start at Selhurst Park in the Conference League on Thursday evening. 

Notable individual performances from Chris Richards, Maxence Lacroix, and Tyrick Mitchell.

UPCOMING FIXTURES