Goals from
Watford’s Armen Abdi and Nathanial Chalobah punished Palace for a slow start
with two goals inside the opening quarter of an hour. The slow start for Palace
at Vicarage Road showed a degree of naivety in the first half as they failed to
learn the lessons from the opening day of the season. Watford remain the only
team to win at Selhurst Park this season and their success then as now, was
down to their pace and flair on the counter attack. Palace paid too much
respect to the foreign imports of Watford’s golden boys as the likes of Vydra
and Cassetti controlled the midfield, whilst the defensive understanding
between Richards and Moxey in the Palace backline appeared to be critically
lacking.
Yet this was
a game of two halves and Palace, inspired by a sell out away following, finally
warmed up a cold Friday night rewarding the fans with a stunning second half
comeback. Palace and Watford are the Championships leading scorers. Palace have
scored fifty four goals in thirty one matches, having already comeback to win
on five separate occasions this campaign. It should not have been surprising
therefore when Palace got back into the match, following a tactical change from
Holloway and the introductions of maestro Jonny Williams and the evergreen
Kevin Phillips. What is surprising is that the comeback followed the same
pattern of Watford’s fight back on the opening day.
A 3 – 2 win
back in August saw goals in the eighty eighth and ninetieth minutes for the
hornets but on this occasion the boot was on the other foot. Jonny Williams
changed the game. He wrestled control of the match away from Watford finally making
Palace’s possession pay. Two goals in four minutes saw a repeat of Saturday’s
comeback against Charlton. Goals from Ramage and Phillips, (first for
the club) wiped out Watford’s advantage in an instance. A half of exhilarating
high tempo attacking football made up for a very slow first half. Watford was made to look
tired in the second half as Palace took the impetus away from them, finally
neutralising their counter attacking threat.
A draw over
the whole match was a fair result because of the way Watford started and the
way Palace fought back with a stirring second half display. Yet Watford was
lucky not to fall to defeat as Zaha became increasingly effective. After
Phillips’s equaliser Zaha produced some great footwork to cross for Delaney to
nearly notch a winner as the game entered stoppage time. Holloway and the
Palace faithful were left wanting more of the teams second half performances
from the beginning of matches. Zola alternatively was left stunned and
impressed by the Eagles second half display. With fifteen games to go both
managers want to have a real push for promotion.
The race for promotion for both Watford and
Palace is certainly on. In the heat of battle the two sides served up one of
the best matches in the Championship this season. A point may not be ideal for
either side but with Palace at home to Middlesbrough on Saturday they prevented
Watford completing a double and in the process kept themselves in touch with
the automatic promotion places at the top of the table.
No comments:
Post a Comment