Normally the morning after a game I've managed to condense strains of thought and emotion down into something coherent, but I'm still in ranting mode right now. For which I apoligise. So a couple of things:
1) Ake and Mepham. With Palace down to 10 and sitting deep, the CBs are going to see a lot of the ball, and more to the point, have a lot of time and space when they are on the ball.
So why did they sit so deep? They were getting the ball off of Ramsdale, or passed back to them by the recycling midfield, and for much of the time they were halfway within our own half. I get that they were worried about counter attack so didn't want to push on too much, but when Ake/Mepham have the ball at feet and there's fully 30 yards of empty space between them and the nearest Palace player - why were they so hesitant?
Stride forwards 10-20 yards into midfield man. You'll either bring a Palace body towards you and create a gap in their first rank of defence, or you'll drive the rest of our formation forwards 10-20 yards with you. Either is an assertive, progressive, aggresive move.
Instead they'd passively take a touch, look around, another touch, and then timidly pass it sideways to the other, or to the full back.
Even Ake, normally oozing his class, looked devoid of the confidence to do the above last night.
2) Billing and Lerma. It's well documented that we have a lack of partnerships right now, the above hints at this also. One partnership that just a few weeks ago was looking pretty tidy: Billing and Lerma. How in the space of a few weeks being apart, have they seemingly lost all that understanding with each other? They played like two strangers, with no link up, or anticipation of the others movements. When the partnership that was working a few weeks ago is going wonky, then it's a worrying trend.