Ayew isn't the attacking threat he used to be, but he contributes a lot to our success as a team. His defense is very good for an attacker – far above the current Palace average for a midfielder – and in attack he draws enough fouls to make the defenders cautious and to bring free kicks in dangerous areas. Though he's not consistently great at crossing, if we'd had better strikers Ayew would have had plenty more assists.

Edited by CT Charlie (01 Oct 2022 6.26pm)

I am afraid we get what we deserve.
Today, in the first half, despite being ahead, for a fair while, it was again a case of 'can we have the ball back Mister ?', giving them so much possession and making mistakes on the edge of our own box.
We could talk until the cows come home again about the thinly-veiled display of refereeing bias towards the bigger club (how many times did he let Chelsea play on with Palace players down ?, the Tiago incident, the number of times Ayew was clumped and the yellow cards ignored, yet Edouard gets one for an innocuous first challenge).
The fact remains though that we will not get better results against the top teams until we have an owner who rather than spending time on TV crowing about our academy, from which any players produced are shipped away for a whole season on loan and therefore useless to us, but is prepared to do transfer windows properly rather than preside over the very poor summer one.
I believe we now have Andersen, Clyne and Richards injured without masses of cover.
Despite 10 years of Premiership money we again played today Ward (great servant etc), who played in the Championship and a 35 year old goalkeeper whose kicking is a complete embarassment and who waved the winner into the net.
On top of that we have Luka, Riedewald and probably Jordan Ayew who need upgrading.
In the Premiership, given the riches, you need to keep evolving (I don't necessarily mean the West Ham cliche of 'moving to the next level'), but right now it feels like we are competing on the cheap again.

He also took a helluva lot of kicks from them during the match - most of which the ref 'didn't see'. Bound to be slowing him down towards then end if he's feeling the effects

A stairway to Heaven and a Highway to Hell give some indication of expected traffic numbers

Read the post properly... I said ONE of the reasons.. Listen, if you believe that players like Ayew and Ward are of enough quality to be starting in Premiership teams then that's fine but just accept that the season is going to be a struggle... Which even though its only 7 games old it's proving to be so far.

Don't waste your time with jealousy. Sometimes your ahead, sometimes your behind, the race is long. But in the end it's only with yourself!!

The frequency of late opposition goals against Viera's team cannot be denied. It has to be a matter of urgency to evaluate why this is so. Mental fatigue? Physical fatigue? Whatever it may be, strategies need to be put in place to keep the ball away from our area. Fair or foul. Psychologically it is very possible that the 85th minute "here we go again" panic could set in amongst the players.
The difference between the points lost and won is mid table comfort or relegation battle.
We really didn't strengthen to the degree we needed to in the area that Gallagher proved vital last season. He's popped up today to remind us what we lack.

And the Premiership is not exactly littered with a history of really successful American players !!