Post-match thoughts v Palace

All in all a good performance from start to finish, Palace are a bit of an annoying team for us to beat. I was glad that their focus is on getting to their European Final and at least one of the two clubs with AFCB connections to beat them!
Glasner’s words are ridiculous but I guess that’s the sort of German humour that we may have to get used to next season?
The Palace fans were excellent and I hope that we can recreate that at Fulham next week?
Petrovic 7 Quietish match for him but caught a few balls to help his defenders.
Jimenez 7 Some good tackles and attacking play but his final ball was below par often.
Hill 7.5 Solid again and improves with each match IMO.
Senesi 7.5 A proper baller playing out from the back we will miss his skills next season. Conned the referee for the penalty though for sure!
Truffert 8 what a find this fella is becoming? Great defensively and is getting the hang of going forward, close to being my player of the season.
Rayan 6.5 I was looking for him to be hooked before he popped up with his goal! Undoubtedly a huge talent being so raw and young. I hope that the new manager plays him less as a winger though in the future?
Adams 7 Gritty and determined good to see him start bossed Lerma I feel.
Scott 7.5 Another enterprising game, if Tuchel ignores him on his current form for the WC it will be a travesty.
Tavernier 7 Looks to enjoying his football more and probably should have scored but an important player for us in the run in.
Kroupi 7 Like Rayan still a bit raw but so cool with the penalty, hope that we get at least another term out of him.
Evanilson 8.5 His energy to the cause is incredible chasing down lost causes, his pirouette in the first half was sublime. Well done Eva for creating havoc amongst defenders, I wouldn’t want to have to play against him!
Christie 7.5 has the air of calmness and helped us see out the game comfortably, love this guy!
Brooks 7 lovely pass for the third goal and useful contributor to the team often from the bench.
Adli, Unal and Doak token subs but good to have them as options atm.

Andoni 7.5 Selection and rotation good can’t believe he’s not staying for one more year to benefit from the work has put in this season?

Referee 6 Was generous to us I felt especially with the penalty award, which is a change from some useless officials we have had recently.

Good summer atmosphere and the points gratefully received…nearly half a PL season unbeaten?….this is pure madness!
 
JT_AFCB said:
Was a good performance but it was obvious that Palace essentially fobbed this one off to put all of their eggs in the European basket. The guy who played LWB for them in the first half didn’t even look like a professional footballer let a PL level one. Still, we did what we had to.

Most pleasing thing for me today was that we looked a threat from set pieces which I think is going to have to continue if we are to achieve something special.

For all the talk of us being vulnerable against more physical sides there was very little evidence of that today, Hill made JSL look like a championship level striker (he probably is anyway in fairness) and JPM didn’t exactly cause us problems with his physicality when he came on.

That’s nine goals conceded in twelve games now and the crazy thing is that five of those have been either penalties or own goals!

I don’t mean to talk our chances up too much but we have given ourselves a very good chance here. We seem to have developed into a side that doesn’t really have any glaring weaknesses. I don’t think that there is anyone who we can’t get a result against. Not to say that we will, but we’ve got a chance.
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One glaring weakness is not being able to put away the many chances created. Another is (Sunday aside)turning victory’s into draws.
 
We are so far off clinical. If we had a player who could find spaces like Defoe for example we'd have won everything by now.
 
We actually have the equal most clinical player in the league in Kroupi - a shot conversion rate of 28%. The problem is, he's only taken 43 shots.

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Premier League Top Scorers - BBC Sport

Premier League top scorers. Showing assists, time on pitch and the shots on and off target.
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Having said that, I agree it does feel like we've let too many good chances go begging across the team over the season. For what it's worth, our xG for the season shows us being about 3 goals short of where we should be:

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Premier League xG table 2025/2026 - expected goals standings

Premier League 2025/2026 ranked by expected points (xPts). See Premier League xG table, or justice table for 2025/2026 and other seasons on FotMob.
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Chelsea are 9 goals short and Palace 16! And somehow, despite their abject failure of a season, Spurs have scored 8 more than expected.
 
Yesterday we scored 3 goals from an XG of 2. I think that people have an unrealistic expectation of how many chances we should be converting.

I can only really think of a couple of games this season in which we’ve really squandered a hatful of presentable opportunities, those being Burnley away and Brentford at home. This is kind of balanced out by games like Fulham at home and Leeds and Palace away in which we were ridiculously clinical with the limited chances that we had.
 
Coobster said:
The penalty was a strange one, in real time it looked 100% a penalty and then looked about a 1% penalty on the replay - the 1% is for the fact the keeper did touch him a tiny bit! The commentary team seemed to say the reason VAR didn't get involved is that because there was some contact then therefore the decision wasn't wrong. It does seem a very weird threshold that if that had been a different team we'd been playing, it would have been overturned.
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If that’s a penalty then the game is gone. Forget all of this threshold nonsense, just use exercise the use of common sense.
 
JT_AFCB said:
If that’s a penalty then the game is gone. Forget all of this threshold nonsense, just use exercise the use of common sense.
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I saw a referee podcast the other day when they said one minute fans are calling for consistency, and the next they want common sense.

I agree with him, it’s never gonna be 100% perfect. You just gotta live with it and stop moaning.
 
JT_AFCB said:
Yesterday we scored 3 goals from an XG of 2. I think that people have an unrealistic expectation of how many chances we should be converting.

I can only really think of a couple of games this season in which we’ve really squandered a hatful of presentable opportunities, those being Burnley away and Brentford at home. This is kind of balanced out by games like Fulham at home and Leeds and Palace away in which we were ridiculously clinical with the limited chances that we had.
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Xg just seems like complete boll0cks to me but leaving that aside our problem is less wasted shots and more wasted opportunities. Yesterday Jimenez, Rayan and Eva all had the opportunity to either have a shot or pass to a team mate in a better position but in "that moment" made the wrong decision. Jimenez and Rayan will learn but I think AI might've done a Christie on Eva and turned him from an attacker to a hard working midfielder who scores the odd goal.
 
JT_AFCB said:
If that’s a penalty then the game is gone. Forget all of this threshold nonsense, just use exercise the use of common sense.
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Problem is if he was running at goal and got the same level of contact from the 'keeper even if he manufactured it then it's a penalty so by the same logic this is one too.

Neither scenario should be a penalty IMO. I hate it when it goes against us and a little embarrased when it goes for us. It's the way the rules are interpreted now.
 
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