PALACE SMASH BELOW PAR NEWCASTLE TO BITS

CRYSTAL PALACE 5 NEWCASTLE 1

BY AYODELE ODUMADE AT SELHURST PARK

Alan Pardew suggested after Crystal Palace’s defeat to Sunderland last Monday that his team were short of ideas. There were no such concerns today as they put an abject Newcastle team, sinking like a ship to sword, recording only their third home win in the league this season.  The score line flattered Newcastle as a magnificent Palace side were into double figures with chances. Their players were queuing up to have a pop at the Newcastle goal.

In the 7^th minute, Jason Puncheon crossed the ball from the left into the area but Rob Elliot pushed the ball away from the danger area as two Palace players were lurking at the back post.  Three minutes later, Daryl Janmaat got down the right wing and crossed the ball into the Palace area, where Papiss Cisse connected with a header to give the Toon Army the lead.  The Palace defence stood still as the header slowly crept in. 

With 13 minutes of the game gone, Connor Wickham found James McArthur on the edge of the Newcastle penalty box and he hit a right foot curler, which deflected off a defender, wrong-footed Rob Elliot and flew into the net for the equaliser.   McArthur almost repeated the trick moments later when the ball was laid back to him by Yannick Bolasie but he blazed his shot over leaning backwards.

Shortly after the hour mark, Wickham’s cross eventually found its way to Bolasie, who smashed his shot from inside the box, with a sea of bodies in front of him, but he found the bottom left corner of the net to give Palace the lead.  What a turnaround.

With a few minutes to the break, Wickham who had been very effective, got the ball down the left wing and was tripped, but instead of going down he kept going and crossed the ball to Wilfred Zaha who hit his shot into the ground and looped in to make it 3-1 to Palace.   Palace maintained their two-goal lead at the break.

Just after the break Palace were awarded a free kick outside the Newcastle penalty box.  Johan Cabaye chipped the ball to Damien Delaney who headed it on to Bolasie, who smashed the ball in from close range to score his second goal of the game and increase Palace’s lead to 4-1.  Newcastle looked done. All that was left for them was to play for pride.  Wickham should have made it five when the ball was crossed to him by Zaha, but unfortunately he fluffed his lines from close range with a fresh air shot. 

Moments later Palace started to play champagne football as they passed the ball around. Zaha chased a lost cause, crossed to Jason Puncheon who saw his pile driver just fly over the bar.   Puncheon then went on a run on the left and crossed to Bolasie who saw his shot fly over the bar. 

Zaha and Joel Ward exchanged passes on the right hand side and Ward drove for the box before unleashing a shot, which was tipped over by Elliot for a corner.  Right at the end Pape Souare neatly turned in the box but hit his shot just wide. In added time Bolasie went down the left wing again and this time hit a shot, which the keeper could only parry to onrushing McArthur who calmly slotted it home to make it Palace 5 Newcastle 1.  Newcastle dropped into the bottom three and at the moment it is difficult to see how they can turn this around. 

It was not long ago that Pardew was being hounded by the Newcastle fans. How they must wish he was still with them.

Pardew said “ We took the disappointment from last Monday into work this week and we got the reaction I was expecting. I am glad Wickham got the man of the match today but Bolasie and Zaha ran him close. This was a pivotal game in our season.”

Steve McLaren said: “We are hurting. We are not handling adversity very well.  We made two mistakes and gave away bad goals. The fans travel a long way. We need to sort it out. I am hugely disappointed, very hurt. That’s not our standard.”