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Oh Tony Pulis, What Have You Done?
First thing’s first… West Brom were very, very poor yesterday afternoon. But I hope nobody dares let that detract from what was a dominant and classy display from an accomplished palace side.
The opening exchanges promised little for either side in all honesty, Palace showed glimpses of their quality going forward but both sides were sloppy in possession all over the pitch. As the game progressed Palace got better and West Brom, well… didn’t. The attacking quartet of Puncheon, Zaha, Bolasie and Gayle really did grow into the match – from the 20th minute onwards they kept getting better and better as a unit with Zaha impressing in particular. And it was Zaha who drew Chris Brunt into the foul that won palace their second penalty in two games before being duly dispatched by Yohan Cabaye, not long after the Frenchman whipped in a glorious ball onto the head of the waiting Yannick Bolasie who powered the header in. 2-0, a great result, and with it came some immense performances.
For once I thought the manager hit the nail on the head in his post-match press conference and I’m going to echo his sentiments almost exactly. Patience was the key to today’s excellent performance because although the baggies offered little going forwards, they are after all a Tony Pulis side and to his credit they were resolute against a better side for the majority of the game. We were good enough to break West Brom down a good number of times in the first half (mostly through Zaha’s brilliance and Brunt’s ineptitude) but we couldn’t make it count where it really mattered – the scoreboard. But what we were doing was working, and palace showed great patience and maturity as a side to not worry and keep playing the same way – the way that was working – and naturally it paid off. Twice.
Wilfried Zaha was picked out by more or less every single pundit that has commented on the game yesterday afternoon and he deserves the praise coming his way because at the moment he has got full backs on ice. While Chris Brunt is not the toughest opposition he will face in his career (he is a winger after all) he ran him ragged from the outset, beating him with every single trick he had in the book. His last two performances have dazzled – Ian Wright said that technically, Wilfried has everything required to be a top player – now he just needs to add consistency. If he can maintain this level of performance over an extended period he will prove to the world why Manchester United took a chance on him. Zaha has the quality, but can he keep delivering?
Yohan Cabaye was again in imperious form on Saturday and was once again a joy to watch, orchestrating moves across the pitch, keeping possession and and keeping the team ticking over. What he does is, at times, not very spectacular at all – a short pass here and there to release others is often the role he fulfils, but he does it again and again. It surprised me initially how combative Cabaye is – for such a technical player he is incredibly industrious, willing to fight hard for every single ball as well as being fearsome out of possession, never shirking a big challenge. Sometimes you can’t help but step back and applaud the quality on the ball he demonstrates but application, work rate and dedication are traits becoming increasingly hard to find in a player of his technical ability, but traits that can be found in abundance within Yohan Cabaye and it’s that, rather than his obvious talent, which is the most impressive thing about the Frenchman.
It mustn’t be forgotten that this West Brom side would have done well to win against ‘that’ Derby side of 2008 (yes, they really were that bad) and so as good as palace were, they didn’t come under any sort of sustained pressure in any part of the game. West Brom gave the ball away time after time and Rondon had pitifully few touches in the palace half in the first 45 minutes in particular – and don’t think that’s because of anything else apart from some really shocking service and poor ball retention.
However win we did and full time (as well as large parts of the second half to be honest) were met with a raucous rendition of a song that everyone hoped we’d get to sing “Oh Tony Pulis, what have you done?” Yesterday was a first-class performance in front of a first-class crowd, all over a side managed by a manager that left us high & dry one year ago. The three points put us up to 4th, just a win (and 8 goals) off top spot… does it get better than this?
