Wolves Fans' Verdict v Crystal Palace: A disjointed display

Clive Smith

The most positive week in a long while with two wins and some signings. Then its off to Selhurst Park which is rarely an enjoyable experience – and so it proved.

We didn’t get bullied for once but the falling down legacy of Zaha lives on with Ayew and Eze. The referee constantly read our aggression as fouls leading to early cards for Semedo and Ait-Nouri.

For almost an hour we bossed possession and a lot of it was in the right areas of the pitch for once. Time and time again our approach play was good and openings were created only to be wasted by a reluctance to shoot.

Neto, Ait-Nouri, Cunha and Silva should have all tested their keeper in that time. Lemina and Gomes were excellent in midfield, in a similar way they were at United.

Out of nothing Palace made the breakthrough and from then on we looked second best. Hwang swiftly replaced Sarabia and almost as swiftly got our equaliser from a good Neto free kick.

We failed to kick on though and our stamina started to wane. Palace looked fresher and played at a higher tempo. Whereas we had been able to get bodies back to cover earlier in the game we struggled to maintain that and consequently trailed 3-1 following a couple of goals that looked pretty preventable.

My management skills are clearly suspect as I would have replaced Cunha much earlier, but fair play to him for getting a touch to another Neto cross which made the final score a better reflection of the game overall.

Besides our lack of shooting other chances were wasted by poor passing. Passing was the crux. Ignoring the horrendous one from Sa, in attack we either over-played in and around their box or were just not accurate enough. Get that right and we will get more positive results.

Lemina was MOTM, our engine room and catalyst for several of our most promising moves. Neto had his best game since United and did well to find so much space. I thought Kalajdzic deserved more than 10 minutes and Doc might have given us fresh legs to support the attack, as Semedo flagged, once we had gone 2-1 down.

Adam Virgo

Another game where we’ve gifted the opposition easy goals, been poor at both ends of the pitch and it’s resulted in another defeat because of it.

First half we did everything well apart from when we got into the final third where we lacked any real creativity, were too slow and indecisive with our attacks and didn’t have any real good chances from the amount of the ball we had. Apart from the chance they had which Jose Sa gifted them, they didn’t have much at all and we were well in the game.