Crystal Palace 2 Leicester 1
Report by Ian Bason
On the way to my first away game of the season I was hoping for 3 points and the minimum required was a draw. It was also my first experience of seeing our own clearly identified LCFC stewards at away games, which is an initiative by the Premier League to help improve fan behaviour.
Line up wise, there was the welcome return of Kristiansen and while pre-match media reports had mentioned doubling up against Zaha, the expected Ricardo and Castagne partnership didn’t materialise, with Tete retained and Ricardo on the bench.
At times the first half felt like the scenes from the Alamo, as Palace peppered City’s goal with a total of 20 shots, with no goals resulting due to a mixture of blocks from Dewsbury-Hall and Faes (to name a couple) and the outstanding form of Daniel Iversen who made an impressive range of saves.
The only exception was in the 11th minute, when after a good run, Kristiansen’s cross hit the post.
This was another game where we failed to keep hold of the ball, conceding possession quickly on many occasions, with Ndidi being the worst offender with sloppy passes. At the half time whistle, there was a general relief it was still goalless, while the departure of Zaha injured just before the break gave City fans some additional confidence of a better second half.
It was no surprise after the interval, that the ineffective Tete was placed by Ricardo who took up an inverted full back position, which worked well and brought Maddison more into the game. Chances for Castagne & Maddison began Leicester’s best spell of the game, topped off with a move featuring a deep ball from Ndidi which found Castagne and then Ricardo who fired a shot into the top corner on the 57th minute.
The celebrations in the away end were cut short when a free kick was given away centrally at the edge of the box. Eze hit a great shot which Iversen tipped onto the bar but then was unfortunate as it ricocheted back off Iversen’s backside and into the net.
In what looked like a planned move, Thomas replaced Kristiansen in the 60th minute, who presumably couldn’t last a full 90 minutes after returning from injury. Kristiansen again impressed, although to be fair to Thomas, he had his best 30 minutes for some time.
Leicester continued to struggle to make chances, despite having 49% of possession, and Iheanacho replacing Daka in the 72nd minute had no bearing on the game.
Palace were still creating more goal attempts, but the game appeared to be heading for a draw. In the 86th minute, Palace replaced Édouard (who had done little in the game) with Mateta. I feared the worst as Mateta seems to pop up with late goals and having already mis hit one shot, there couldn’t be one any later than the 94th minute, when he converted an Ayew through ball (I need to look at replays to see where the defending went wrong)
The stats don’t lie, over the 94 minutes Palace managed a total of 31 shots in comparison to our 3, you are rarely going to win games with those type of stats and now we really need 6 points from our next 2 home games, so it wasn’t encouraging on the journey home to hear Villa pull apart Chelsea and the commentary team discuss Villa’s current excellent away form.
There were a significant number of fans calling for a manger change again. Fans do have every right to air their views, and the majority of fans waited until the game was finished, however a number started those calls in the 78th minute, surely we should be focusing on backing the team until the final whistle ?
City (4-3-3): Iversen; Castagne, Souttar, Faes, Kristiansen (Thomas 60); Ndidi, Dewsbury-Hall, Maddison; Tete (Ricardo 45), Daka (Iheanacho 72), Barnes. Subs (not used): Ward, Amartey, Soyuncu, Mendy, Soumare, Vardy.
The views expressed in this report are the opinions of the Trust member nominated to file the report only and do not represent the views of the Foxes Trust organisation