5-1 Palace: Yes, you read right...‘5′

What a response.

I’ll admit that I didn’t see that coming after going 1-0 down 10 minutes in. Irrespective of how well we’d started after going a goal down I thought that it would be Monday night all over again – 90 minutes of watching us bang our head against a brick wall that would ultimately end in defeat and more frustration.

How wrong I was.

A result like this requires a lot of different things to click into place and up until today we have had just one or two missing. Yannick has had a lukewarm start to the season, but in the past couple of weeks he has really kicked on and it culminated in his performance today. Today he scored 2, created a number of chances and looked a lot more like the thorn in the side he has been in the last couple of seasons at Palace.

Connor Wickham made exactly the kind of difference that I was looking for and also failed to score which wasn’t wholly unexpected. He ran the channels well, linked play up and pressed the opponent. He gave the target man performance we have been crying out for and this allowed the rest of the team to play in the way they did, it freed Yannick and Wilfried on the wings and it gave us a presence up front.

Puncheon looked more involved as well after not having a mediocre start to the season. He is yet to really take off this season but today showed some signs of improvement. He’s drifted in and out of games this season and today he began to get himself into decent positions again today, the game didn’t pass him by in the same way it has before.

Our cause was helped somewhat by just how poor Newcastle were – on the day they buckled when it really mattered. It seemed as if the Newcastle players lacked fight, they lacked the desire to win – make no mistake that club is in a bad place at the moment. The first goal was a slice of luck and helped us get into the game, but after that we didn’t look back. Overall however the result means the biggest margin of victory Palace have achieved in the Premier League and a very good performance to go with it.

I don’t want to be the cloud on a clear day because this game could be significant, but only ‘could’. This is the response we needed after Monday night but I will keep saying it – results like this, picking up 3 points against teams we should be looking to win against is crucial.

This result can’t be in isolation.

The Sunderland game cancelled out the wonderful performance at Liverpool, it’s important that this isn’t a flash in the pan good performance. I really and truly believe that this can be one of the greatest seasons in the history of this club, this team has the potential to do really special things and today proved that. Long may it continue.