Crystal Palace Fan View: Three things we learned from Palace's draw with Leicester

Townsend & Benteke once again the stars

I sang the praises of both Andros Townsend and Christian Benteke after Crystal Palace beat Arsenal and against Leicester they once again they delivered sparkling performances. The flamboyant nature of Zaha’s play makes him an easy target for praise; when he is on song he makes professional footballers look like they’ve just had their football stolen by a bigger kid at the park – they just want to slump off home and forget the whole ordeal.

Townsend is a very different proposition. He too has the ability to go past players, albeit not in quite the same ‘maverick’ way that Zaha can muster, but his forte lies in his delivery of the ball. In contrast to Zaha, Townsend can delivery from anywhere, as we saw on countless occasions on the weekend. Benteke was oh so close to more than one of Townsend’s deliveries, both from open play and dead ball situations before nodding home a peach of a ball from Andros to earn Palace a draw.

On the note of Benteke, once again he turned in a dominant performance. Without wishing to repeat myself, he’s had his fair share of criticism from Crystal Palace fans, chief among which was his ability and endeavour to hold up play and act as an effective target man. In Leicester he followed up his physical and dominant performance against Arsenal with another, continuing to battle the two centre-halves but adding a goal to impressive overall contribution this time around.

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Uncharacteristic defending the root of Crystal Palace’s problems

Our recent run of form has, unsurprisingly, been built on a solid defensive platform focussed on securing a clean sheet first and foremost and then developing from there. In conceding twice to Leicester we managed to concede as many goals in one game as we had in the preceding six combined, including games against Arsenal & Chelsea.

It was a bit of a throwback to the sloppiness we saw so often a few months ago. A goal directly from a throw-in after failing to mark the single largest player in the Leicester side is inexcusable and even the second was certainly preventable. Schlupp wasn’t the first and won’t be the last to be turned by a fast change of direction from Jamie Vardy but Hennessey will be disappointed his shot found itself into the back of the net after he got a hand to it.

Characterful fightback shows progress

Towards the end of his reign Pardew’s Crystal Palace was typified by a lack of character, a lack of fight and crumbling under the pressure. Yesterday was anything but. We went behind twice to two frankly sloppy goals that we ought to have done better with but nevertheless fought back to pick up a valuable point. Cast your mind back a few short weeks to the Sunderland game, a game which demonstrated a penchant for self-destruction that we had allowed to become a habit. Yesterday was certainly a far cry from that performance

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This new-found strength of character can be typified in just one moment in yesterday’s game. It was a chuck away moment that I doubt many people even remember but it signifies everything good about Crystal Palace in the last few weeks for me. In the 45th minute Ward found himself in Leicester’s box and Schmeichel launched the ball out to a Leicester player on the left touchline. In one throw, he’d turned defence to attack and Palace were on the back foot and were looking vulnerable with both Townsend and Ward stuck yards behind the attack.

Not to worry though. Across strode Luka Milivojevic to break up the attack with one tough tackle, setting Palace back on their way with a simple pass. That togetherness, that desire to sprint over and cover for your teammate, that’s why we’ve been so successful in the last few weeks and that is what Sam Allardyce has brought back to Palace.