Why have Palace become so poor at passing(forward) and crossing

jeudi 23 janvier 2020

Considering that Palace once had Glenn Murray scoring 31 goals in a season (many from crosses) Johnson who was prolific for 2-3 seasons (being played in from good balls) and going back even further the likes of Freedman/Morrison who also received the ball regularly in good positions, I remain baffled as to why we have become so poor at delivering the ball forward, or just crossing the damn thing accurately on a regular basis.

Roy is renown for repetitive training in defensive formations and play etc, but we don't seem to employ the same amount of effort offensively.

Whilst I appreciate some may consider the likes of Macca, McCarthy and Kouyate as not exactly creative pass masters, I fail to see why the likes of Brighton, and Southampton can excel at something pretty basis, and probably honed by repetitive training routines, whilst we can't. We saw McCarthy put a great through ball to Wilf against Man City, but that was just the once, whereas our opposition puts these dangerous balls in time and time again (Derby kept on doing it it in the FA Cup match)

Likewise with crossing the ball. Obviously with Townsend absent it leaves a big hole, Ward is probably the best crosser of a ball, the likes of Schlupp and PVA seem to like to do so at speed and low on the deck where it gets cut out, and as for Wilf...he seems to have a spot on the goal line (about 5metres from the first post) which he aims for and usually wont release it (if at all) until he gets there. No wonder our front guys get so few chances.

At the moment we prefer to do lots of tippy-tappy push and run against defences to get forward, but that only works when the likes or PVA, Schlupp, Townsend and Meyer are fit and on song. With most of those guys out, we now seem to just to rely on mass defence sucking people forward and then hoping that Wilf and Ayew can conjure a bit of magic to beat a load of players.

However with the forwards we have, a midfield properly drilled in releasing good forward balls should reap dividends. Is this something that Roy and Ray struggle with?

Strangely only Sakho seems to be able to provide constant accurately struck forward balls, and he's barely played this season

Hopefully we'll have a re-juvenated Luka back next match, and he seems to be the best we have in midfield for distribution, but we certainly will need to improve in this area if Wilf goes at the end of the season


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