Might as well leave this here

wrote it for another board, assuming there would be loads on here, but I guess not. I've probably got this all wrong but...

Just back from Palace, bit of a weird one obviously being pre-season doesn't really mean anything.

I think we played the diamond both halves, although tough to tell in the second. First half with Martin at the point and Jackson and Holt up front, but the way they spread out it could have been more 4-3-3. Johnson looked good, De Laet looked very good going back but his passing was a bit shoddy. Jackson still seems to be the player we saw towards the end of last season, looked much sharper than when he came on at Selhurst park the last time we were there and came very close with a shot from the edge of the box and a near post header from a Cafu cross. Barnett looking solid too.

Second half Johnson came off for Surman who to be frank looked incredible, his first 3 or 4 touches were exquisite and almost put I think Holt through for what would have been a great goal. After about 10 minutes the switched everyone around and Surman dropped back into the base of the diamond from what I could tell, so couldn't create as much but still didn't really put a foot wrong, maybe one wayward cross. The formation was a bit of a mess after this and we didn't really look like we knew what was going on. A lot went through Wes, but Korey was at RB, and Francombe at CB. Zak looked VERY assured, but Francombe was completely at fault for the goal and never really looked settled. Bennett seemed to be playing on the left of the diamond and sometimes falling in just behind Wes, which was a shame as he couldn't seem to really get involved and I would have liked to see him tearing up the right wing. Adeyemi was on the right, but again playing quite centrally, did have one very good run through the middle where he almost scored, but got the ball nicked at the last minute and "My hasn't he grown" didn't recognise him at first, has bulked up and filled out a lot.

We kept the ball really well for the whole game, but especially the first half but not a huge amount of pressure. We were obviously comfortably the better team but still had a few problems with the pace of people like Scannell and Ambrose, exactly the same as last time we played Palace. Could have made better use of the wings, Tierney was left to do whatever he liked for the entire first half, and Korey had a similar freedom in the second. If we'd been able to play 4-4-2 and have Bennett and Pilkington there we would have destroyed them.

Summary: Absolutely nothing, except I wrote a lot more than I planned to. Surman could be one to watch this season, some beautiful passing.

Posted By: CROMAGZ, Jul 27, 00:05:20