On another sobering midweek night in London, Emma Thompson was in the Arthur Wait stand for True Faith. It wasn't pretty.
"PALACE SAINT-GERMAIN!!" was the cry from the home faithful as we trudged out of a freezing Selhurst Park last night. Witty enough, lads - and not entirely without merit based on what we'd just sat through. As disappointing as this particular midweek away day was, however, it has some way to go to compare with the abject heartbreak and injustice of our visit to the other Saint-Germain across the Channel. Small mercies...
No self-respecting Mag could complain of injustice on this occasion. Aside from the automatic, customary in-person rage at a dismissed penalty claim (which upon review looked to be rather soft and in fact easier to just shoot - more on that later), if anything, the 2-0 scoreline spares our blushes. Make no mistake, this result flattered us on an evening where we truly served up anything as insipid as we've seen all season.
Palace were superior in every department here, and controlled proceedings from start to finish. What feels baffling is the how and the why; talk of threadbare starting 11s and fatigue fail to hold any water at this point. If anything, a 10 day pause after the dizzying high of Spurs seems to have conspired against us, with all of that giddy momentum drained away and no match for the buoyancy, fluidity and energy of this revitalised Palace side. Rather worryingly, questions therefore emerge around the optimal length of downtime between games; if we're no good playing twice a week and no good after a week's rest...when will we be good?
Complacency and lack of motivation seem to be the other potential explanations for last night's non-performance. An unchanged starting 11 fresh from blowing away Champions League-chasing Spurs were sluggish and sloppy in the extreme from the word go, perhaps without the added impetus of a 'big 6' opponent to charge them. Burn hinted at just as much in a recent interview, and if true, that needs an urgent investigation heading into remaining fixtures against Sheff Utd, Burnley, Brighton and Brentford. I simply cannot overstate how disjointed and generally dogshit we were.
Speaking of the starting 11, the pre-match chatter revolved around whether or not we'd shape up the same way as last time out, or if perhaps any of the returning wounded would make it. Unfortunately, it was a case of Ti-NO, who we really could have done with on either flank. I don't really want to call out who was particularly rotten (OK, as you're asking, Murphy and Krafth were especially rank on the right), but no one really emerged with any credit whatsoever.
The away end was genuinely incredulous in the first half, and more so as it wore on and Palace exerted greater and greater dominance. If you'd told me we'd had 3% possession, I would have nodded in defeated accordance. I can honestly barely recall a successful forward pass after the opening couple of minutes; absolutely everything pinballed instantly back, with sliced half clearances, sloppy punts and awful grass-cutters all over the shop.
Bruno and Anderson were probably the pick of the bunch for my money, but every attempted throughball had about as much disguise as an elephant in a babygrow, and was intercepted with mortifying ease.
Isak had very little to work with - it improved slightly for a brief period mid-way through the second half - but he was in bafflingly tentative form, considering his hot streak. On the rare occasion he found himself anywhere within striking range, he inexplicably took two or three needless touches, and the chances just evaporated as quickly as they came. Likewise for the Longstaff penalty shout - just have a shot, man! It was all bizarrely bad.
Palace, in contrast, were absolutely excellent. Progressive, aggressive. Initially, I thought (hoped) that perhaps the plan was to let them run themselves a bit ragged and hit them on the break, but they were more than wise to it. It just didn't materialise. They gave us not an inch of space all night, and the much-lauded Eze lived up to the hype. A constant menace, with a lovely mix of elegance and power. The big bloke up top wasn't bad either, and his opener came with depressing predictability.
It wouldn't quite be accurate to say that we rallied after the break; we definitely saw more of the ball but ultimately huffed and puffed our way to the sum total of two corners and two shots on target. Hardly worth the ridiculous trek to yet another 8pm in London for the vast majority of those in the away end.
The second came at a wonderful time for the hosts and confirmed the inevitable for the travelling masses. A fairly miserable evening all round, and jarring in its stark contrast to the previous outing. Let's hope it's one to write off, and not a pre-cursor to an uneven end to the most uneven of campaigns.
Emma Thompson