October 28 2013

Arsenal's Aaron Ramsey joins the early blitz on the Eagles' goal

Jamesey entered the Selhurst portals with some trepidation for our match against one of Europe's top teams, Arsenal.

There's been a strong whiff of history repeating itself this season.

In our last two promotion-winning seasons in 1997 and 2004, to a greater or lesser degree we overlooked the players who had taken us up and bought in a collection of foreigners and mercenaries.

Some of the new recruits were totally inadequate and the strong team spirit which had enabled us to win the play-off finals was lost.

This season, it must be said, no one can be blamed for Wilfried Zaha's departure or the injuries suffered by Glenn Murray and Yannick Bolasie, but in the early matches we were without three of our best Championship players. Many of the replacements brought in were panic buys and to be honest have looked it.

And after a turbulent week when we lost our manager, Ian Holloway, and hosted two London derbies, the situation was looking grim.

On Monday night (Oct 21), when Adrian Mariappa headed home an early goal against Fulham, prospects looked reasonably bright but two well-taken goals saw Palace 1-2 down at half time.

It must be said that the Eagles looked disorganised and devoid of ideas in the second half and the visitors banged in a couple more. So a game which, on paper at least, we looked on with a possibility of a point at least, we tamely lost 1-4.

That result precipitated the offer of resignation from IH which, after consideration, was accepted by the CPFC2010 board.

And so, for an early Saturday kick-off against Arsenal (Oct 26), the team selection was down to caretaker manager Keith Millen.

You would have to be a rose-tinted optimist of the ultimate degree to expect very much of a result against the league leaders who have been in blistering form so far in the current campaign.

For the first 15-20 minutes, it was all Arsenal and it was all the Eagles could do keep them out. Millen had made several changes to the team after the Fulham defeat and the formation seemed to be working out well as far as containment was concerned.

To keep it at 0-0 at the break was a great improvement on the previous match but within a couple of minutes of the second period a blatant foul in the box by Adlene Guedioura on Serge Gnabry duly resulted in a penalty which was efficiently converted by Mikel Arteta.

Palace showed much more self belief later in the second half and created some chances that just might have evened up the scores. Even better for Palace was the sending off of Arteta for holding back Marouanne Chamakh when he was theoretically through.

But an excellently taken goal by Olivier Giroud late in the match meant the Gunners would head back over the Thames with three points and a 2-0 victory.

Email Jamesey with your comments to jevans3704@aol.com

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