November 5 2017

Julian Speroni: Palace still await a first clean sheet

Crystal Palace went down to a narrow 1-0 defeat away at Tottenham Hotspur.

Roy Hodgson's side are still without a point on the road and remain stuck to the bottom of the league table – but they had more than enough chances to have won this game.

In the opening seconds, Mamadou Sakho was a whisker away from getting his head on Wilfried Zaha's lofted cross as keeper Paulo Gazzanigga came out of his goal and punched the back of his head in the process. Appeals for a penalty were waved away by referee Kevin Friend.

Tottenham's third-choice stopper Gazzanigga made a brilliant save to his left to push out Scott Dann's header from a corner on 35 minutes.

The home side controlled most of the possession but were unable to penetrate a well-organised Eagles team and the half ended with little goal-mouth action.

After the break, Gazzanigga made another fine stop by diverting away Andros Townsend's low shot from a swift Eagles counter-attack.

When he was finally beaten, Zaha wasted the best opportunity when he raced into Townsend's inch-perfect through-ball, rounded the goalie on the edge of the box but shot wide of an empty net.

Gazzanigga made yet another save to repeal Luka Milivojevic's header from a Palace corner from close range.

But on 64 minutes, Spurs got an undeserved goal after a passage of play ended up with Son Heung-min picking the ball on the edge of the area and he curled in beyond Julian Speroni.

The South Korean almost added another but fired his shot into the side netting and Palace headed back to south London wondering how they didn't get more from this game.

Tottenham: Gazzaniga, Aurier, Vertonghen, Sanchez, Rose (Davies 90), Dier, Winks (Dembele 46), Sissoko, Son, Eriksen, Kane (Llorente 77).

Not used: Whiteman, Trippier, Foyth, Nkoudou.

Palace: Speroni, Fosu-Mensah, Sakho, Dann, Ward (Sako 76), Loftus-Cheek, Cabaye, Milivojevic, Schlupp, Townsend, Zaha.

Not used: Hennessey, Souare, Riedewald, Tomkins, McArthur, Puncheon.

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