First step on long road to redemption for Palace

This week I get to use a phrase that hasn’t been trotted out much in the last year - Palace won, at Selhurst Park. You could almost hear the sigh of relief as the final whistle blew on Saturday, every Palace affiliated man, woman or child inside that ground knew the importance of what turned out to be a comfortable victory.

Aside from the result, there were a number of positives to take from the game. Defensively we looked far more organised and switched-on and though Southampton had a fair amount of both chances and possession, by the end of the game you didn’t expect to concede every time they went forward. Makes a change. The personnel switch which saw James Tomkins move out to right back and Damien Delaney come in at centre-half appeared to pay dividends although, with respect to Martin Kelly, part of that is probably because the switch forced Kelly off the pitch. In the last couple of weeks in particular the opposition have really been going after Kelly and have been profiting – Pardew’s tactical switch solved the issue and for that he deserves credit.

Even though our captain plays at centre-half we’ve looked short of real leadership across the back line in the last few weeks and ultimately a lack of communication and assertiveness has been the root of many of our defensive issues. That didn’t seem to be the case yesterday and, in my eyes, along with the outstanding defensive performance he turned in, that was down to Damien Delaney. Since Tomkins has come into the club I have routinely written Delaney off, once a month usually, but his display yesterday means I’m more than happy to eat a slice of humble pie and admit that he’s not necessarily finished. Both Damien’s personal contribution and our collective defensive display was certainly cause for encouragement, even it wasn’t perfect.

Our defensive display, the fact we didn’t concede from a set-piece and the scoreline are all huge improvements on the last five or six games but we must be cautiously optimistic. The truth is, Southampton were shocking yesterday. Going forward they lacked their usual real cutting edge and squandered the chances they did fashion for themselves, while defensively they ‘did a Palace’.

Benteke’s first goal was an absolute gift from Fraser Forster, Tomkins’ goal came from Southampton failing to properly mark from a corner and once we’re 2 – 0 up the game has changed and Southampton have to come at us. If it was still 0 – 0 (which it could very easily have been) the game would have been a very different prospect and once the nerves start jangling in the 70^th minute, we could have seen a very different outcome.

I don’t want to appear to be negative, I just think it’s important to stay realistic and realise the margins which swung the game our way yesterday, but could just have easily not done so. In our last five games we’ve still only picked up three points – sure we saw an improvement this weekend but frankly it would have been harder for us to get worse than it was to improve on the Swansea result.

This weekend was a step in the right direction for sure, but everyone would do well to remember that this was just first step on what will undoubtedly be a long road to redemption for Alan Pardew. Lose next week to Hull and we will be hovering above the relegation zone again with the pressure firmly back on so the job now is to remain defensively astute and look to find the kind of consistency that can push us up the table and save Pardew’s job.