A TOWN CALLED PALACE
Crystal Palace 5 West Ham 2
Crystal Palace have occupied 14th or 15th position in the Premier League since 6th December 2023. It’s consistency, if nothing else, though whether it makes for a season to remember depends on your point of view.
West Ham have covered positions from fifth to ninth all season, and despite elimination from Europe and managing to only win one league match at home in the whole year, Moyes has kept the Hammers in the top half of the table.
Quite why Jarrod Bowen isn’t around this afternoon as the teams come out at Selhurst Park is anyone’s guess, but it still looks like a game that Hammers can make a mark in. Even the absence of Mavropanos seems a hill that can be climbed. Prospective replacement managers have been surfing the Hammerati all week, but it’s still hard to imagine the kind of person who might follow Moyes into the London Stadium changing room. And Mark Noble hasn’t been in the dugout or socially very visible around the club in the last couple of months either.
Palace returned from Anfield last weekend with three points, but they’ve often bothered the big clubs on the road; this one is in their own back yard. Yet within eight troubled minutes, first Olise, then Eze with a sublime overhead and finally an own goal by Emerson, after a mix-up with Fabianski, see off the fate of the game over the first 20 minutes.
Jean-Phillipe Mateta hits a fourth ten minutes later, but Hammers are fingering the turds by now, or going through the motions, if you prefer. Antonio bundles one in before the half-time whistle, but it looks like frosty stares in the changing-room at half-time.
So what happened? Paquetá looks completely spent, and Emerson is mentally barely on the pitch. Ogbonna and Souček are sacrificed for Johnson and Cresswell at the beginning of the second half, but Mateta scores an Eze-made second and Palace’s fourth just after the hour. To think that there are still four games to play after this one, and you can perhaps see why Hammers fans are mentally leaving the season even before Dean Henderson hilariously messes up Tyrick Mitchell’s innocent-enough back pass in the last minute to cut Palace’s advantage to just three.
This was as forgettable an afternoon as West Ham have managed to fashion since the 6-0 reverse against Arsenal a few weeks back. Let’s hope that’s it for the season, though few of the faithfuls are holding their breath.
1 Lucasz Fabianski, 33 Emerson, 4 Kurt Zouma (captain), 5 Vladimir Coufal, 21 Angelo Ogbonna, 7 James Ward-Prowse, 19 Edson Álvarez, 10 Lucas Paquetá, 28 Tomas Souček, 9 Michail Antonio, 14 Mohammed Kudus
Substitutes: 2 Ben Johnson, 3 Aaron Cresswell, 17 Maxwel Cornet
Goalscorers: Michail Antonio, own goal
