Eddie Howe has not held back in his assessment of last night’s 2-0 defeat at Crystal Palace, revealing how “baffled” he was by certain aspects of our performance.
Speaking to the media after our 10th away defeat of the season, the boss criticised our lack of quality in possession and constant reluctance to shoot, feeling it was a real “missed opportunity” on a night that saw us slip to seventh following Man Utd’s 4-2 win over Sheffield United.
” None of our game was in a good place.” Howe said. “Usually we’re better technically than that and that was a big area of our game that disappointed me. We gave the ball away too much, we didn’t attack well and we seemed reluctant to shoot around their goal, which baffled me really. We got half a yard and didn’t pull the trigger.”
“It’s very disappointing, from the high of Spurs to the low of tonight. We started well for two minutes then it unravelled into an uncomfortable feeling. We had to perform better than we did today. I think it is a missed opportunity. We’re still in the mix (for Europe), but we can’t play like we did today if we’re going to maintain our push for the European places.”
We’d picked up 10 from a possible 12 in our four previous games and were the fresher of the two sides after a rest over the weekend, but we looked bizarrely flat and never got going.
In hindsight, Howe’s decision to stick by the same makeshift defence was the wrong one, especially when Palace were always going to pose a completely different test and set up to Spurs.
Yet another no show away from home, Howe still tactically naive, saw this coming midfield ineffective not impressed with Barnes too inconsistent for me, but you could say that for most of the team last night.
Man Utd can win when they are playing awful, we do not have this in our locker.
Joseph(Quote)
I have to disagree here and side with Howe, with the exception of Bruno, Wilson and occasional flashes from Gordon every one of our team underperformed, we gave the ball away at every opportunity playing simple passes, there was a few instances before Gordon was told to put himself about that bru would get the ball and every one of our players just stood looking at him, nobody tried to move into space or make runs, it was genuinely one of the most frustrating performances I’ve seen from this side and just not good enough.
Sean(Quote)
Sean:-
Olly’s headline says it all for me “Baffled” Eddie Howe!
He will continue to be baffled when he plays square pegs in round holes and doesn’t act quickly enough when things clearly aren’t working.
Palace manager has managed to unbaffle things.
Joseph(Quote)
I’m not sure why he was baffled it’s the way he sets up his team away from home!
We’ve seen it all season away from home, he sets up to play on counter and allows the opposition to control the midfield and tempo of the game and we can’t get a grip and then we concede and it usually ends up 2 or 3 against.
Tactics away from home and player selection is down to Howe and needs huge improvement for next season ☹️
David(Quote)