Three Things We Learnt From West Brom

Well that brought us all down to earth with a bump.

In terms of a performance, unfortunately it was just a repeat of the lukewarm performances we grew accustomed to at the back end of last season. With respect to the result, although I don’t think we necessarily deserved to lose however, by the same token, after a performance like that we can’t feel too hard done by either. However like any game, there were some lessons to take from it including just one or two reasons to be positive looking ahead.

Our team set-up is too one-dimensional

I’ll start with the bad.

Our style of play yesterday (and this is not the only occasion) was far too one dimensional – the pace of Zaha, Bolasie & Townsend lends itself towards counter-attacking football but we’ve seen time and again that it can’t be relied upon to work against every single team we face. It worked under Pulis, it was a time when we were going into every game as the underdogs – we were the team sitting deep and attempting to hit the opposition on the counter.

Against Manchester City, against Arsenal, against Chelsea this will still be the ‘go-to’ tactic and rightly so, some of the most exciting Palace games I’ve watched have seen us take the game to the opposition on the break. However, we’re now going into some games as slight favourites, as was the case yesterday and that obviously requires a change of tact. In his press conference on Thursday Pardew talked about moving towards a more possession based style of play and while any evidence of this change was not obvious yesterday a transition towards it is necessary for success.

We struggled going forwards, that much was obvious to anyone who saw the game and while individual performances can be questioned, the system and focus in which they were playing was perhaps part of the problem playing against a team that plays like West Brom. This isn’t a pop at West Brom by any stretch, they didn’t simply ‘park the bus’ but they knew that the onus was on us to go and win the game so they defended well and took their chance when it came along.

This kind of frustrating performance will happen again, you can be sure of that, but the sooner we can tailor our setup to the different styles we face the more successful we will be this season.

Lee Chung-Yong could have a future at the club

Lee has had a tough time of it at Selhurst Park, his opportunities have been limited and he has been perhaps a little outspoken in the press when it comes to not being selected for which I’m sure he was duly punished. His wonder goal at Stoke last season will live long in the memory but I’ll admit that I thought it would be one of our only memories of Lee as I fully expected to see him leave the club in the summer.

Stick around he did though and yesterday he was one of the shining lights in an otherwise poor performance. He found the space between midfield and attack, he kept the ball fairly well and he looked to provide the creative spark to the team. His game time so far has been limited and you can’t expect a player to come in for 20 minutes and change the game when he hasn’t played for 2 months. Now he’s got a full pre-season behind him and subsequently is in a much better place physically and with that has come a much better performance from Lee in the opening game of the season. One game alone won’t be enough to change Pardew’s opinion of him but if he continues to get chances and continues to turn in performances like yesterday’s then he could force his way into a starting position.

This side can’t be judged until 10/15 games into the season

As disappointed as we all are, we can’t overreact to yesterday’s result, we’re going to lose some games and it’s just the first game of the season. This could have been a one-off, a brief throwback to the mediocrity of last season and we’ll kick on from here – who knows. What I do know is that a significant number of key players weren’t even in the squad today, let alone the starting eleven.

I doubt that Mandanda has been brought in to warm the bench, so presumably he will be the regular starter in goal and both McArthur and Cabaye were missing in the centre of the park. Add in James Tomkins as a straight replacement for Delaney and (we hope) another one striker at least and the starting eleven in two weeks could look very different to the one which started today.

These new introductions mean that we can’t really judge this side until ten or fifteen games into the season at which point the new signings will be up to speed and the French & Welsh players who featured in the European Championships will be back to full fitness. We also hope that the squad is not even complete yet with a reported two or three possible additions yet to come – the opening day is simply not the time or place to judge this team.

That being said Pardew is in a perilous position given the teams struggles at the end of last season and if that kind of form continues into this season I am confident he won’t see January. We picked up just 2 wins in our last 21 games of the Premier League in the second half of last season and that’s Derby County kind of form, the kind of form which can’t be allowed to continue. Yesterday brought the memories of abject performances of last season rushing back and that will weigh on the minds of both the fans and the board when it comes to assessing the teams’ progress.

That’s why it’s all well and good me saying that we need to judge the players in a couple of months, after 10 games or so, but the performances last season mean that the onus really is on him and the players to get this season off to a reasonable start. Yesterday they failed to perform, but next up is Tottenham in a week and that’ll likely see a different team stepping onto the pitch and while of course we can pick up three points it’ll take a much more effective performance than we saw this weekend that’s for sure