First off credit to Palace, they wasn't particularly outstanding but they took their chances, all of their chances in fact and did an adequate job defending their lead.
I've no issue with our starting lineup, nobody bar kyle Walker who was woeful and has been poor for the last month or so had a particular bad game just nobody played well either. they scored from their first chance, a fluke wonder goal and a kyle Walker gift wrapped present but our problem wasn't in defence it was in attack.
We created nothing, moved the ball far too slow from side to side with zero purpose and other than Bernardo silva they were all too happy to stand in position and wait for somebody to do something.
Think Pep got the subs badly wrong, what we needed second half was somebody to inject some pace into our game and some creativity so why bring on Aguero first and make that two players out of the game standing in the box doing nothing because we're not moving the ball well enough to create a chance? And then to add to that, after they scored the third why did he wait 10 minutes or whatever it was to bring on kdb? When he did eventually come on we had lost any kind of formation and it was just a roll the dice with getting as many attacking players as possible on and hope something comes off, we spent 40 minutes of that second half camped in their half passing side to side pointlessly not troubling their keeper, how many saves did he make all game? Even our second goal wasn't a shot. It reminded me of a Man United side under LVG.
It's obviously far from being over but that result will have a major impact on liverpool. It was always about who caves first, That 4 point gap will give them immense confidence and momentum to keep churning out wins, it means they can afford to lose at our place and still be ahead of us which is crucial as it will allow them to play however they want and forces us to go all out to beat them which puts them at an advantage in that one off game too. Imo they'll now be the bookies favourites, it could work against them in terms of can they deal with the pressure but they're not currently dropping points, the confidence will be so unbelievably high and its going to be hard to halt that.
We will move on from this and we don't tend to lose all too often for a habit to form but we do seem to struggle when we're chasing games and need a different approach,I'm not talking of a plan B lump it to Fellini option but when they sit in like that defending a 2 goal lead you have to look for different ways in and not just repeatedly move the ball sideways, we looked clueless for most of the match amd it's strange how the defenders are willing to take 40 yard pot shots but none of our attackers will get off a shot from the edge of the box. Something for Pep to work on. This has hit hard as we're simply not used to losing, especially against inferior teams and even when we do it often doesn't matter but hopefully this gives Pep and the players a little wake up call, I expect a big response in our next 3 games now.
