I'm finding it very difficult to watch our games this season. I couldn't make it to Selhurst today and watched it on the box but switched off 10 minutes into the second half as it was too painful to watch with the outcome almost inevitable.

It's all very well watching backs to the wall football when we were a lower division team playing the big boys in the cup which was magnificent to watch but being unable to compete at this level in our 5th season back is not entertainment which is surely part of the reason for watching. Even with our best 11 the outcome would have been similar.

Even against the so called lesser teams it is painful to watch at the moment and it looks like we are sliding towards relegation. The way I feel at the moment though there is more chance of me renewing my season ticket if we get relegated than if we somehow manage to stay up. I've been supporting Palace for over 50 years and I've never felt this way before even when we were truly poor. Would it be that bad if we went down? Would there be a risk of administration again? Do I need to see a doctor.

.... but keeping possession helps. We were absolutely hapless at keeping the ball today. This meant that our defence was under constant pressure and attempts to get into attacking positions regularly floundered. I don't think there is any doubt that we are the worst side in the division for accurate passing.

If we'd tried to play possession football today the game would have been over after twenty minutes. Thanks for your input Frank.

Over the long term, teams who are successful statistically always dominate possession and even more so in 2018. No one is expecting us to dominate against Spurs but when we get the ball we need to show a whole lot more composure than we did today and against Everton. Possession football in england is mistaken as some sort of brainless, all out attack tactic but that couldn’t be further from the truth and motivation behind it. It’s about having more control over your own destiny in games, in attack AND defence, by having the ability to dictate the tempo more.

There are times where we won’t dominate the ball. Only a fool would believe otherwise. But we’ve struggled in possession for the entire current reign in the Premier League & going on today and Everton, our quality when in possession was nowhere near the quality required to maintain status in this league. If we do this year, it’ll be the same story again next season until we realise this and it will NOT last forever.

We might not be able to compete with Spurs, but they’re a team that will always be strongest with the ball at feet so we should at least be trying to limit the amount of possession they have, by keeping some ourselves. Our retention of the ball is so poor.

“Keeping it compact” and leaving a good percentage of your results to chance always has and always will have a sell by date. We’ve exceeded that by a couple of years now and I hope to God this isn’t the year we run out of lifelines, because refusing to embrace any form of improvement in possession will also likely mean it’ll be very difficult for us to just bulldoze our way through the championship and come straight back up. More and more teams lower down are improving the footballing side of their club in order to build for the future.

We’re too stubborn, never learn our lessons & our footballing vision is short termism at its finest. An unsustainable bubble has to pop at some point, but from the bottom up, we consistently
refuse to acknowledge this.

Of course there were many factors contributing to today beyond the above. But if that is the best our current available XI has to offer with the ball, I seriously worry for us.

Edited by Mstrobez (25 Feb 2018 5.22pm)

We're the Arthur over ere!

I think we did what we had to today. No chance of any attacking fluency with the state of our team, and our patched-together defence couldn't be left exposed. We did ride our luck all game, but just a few minutes more and our sitting deep would have paid off.

Edited by Bangell (25 Feb 2018 5.31pm)