(Hoping for a) Happy New Year!

In my view, the reason the wheels have started to come off recently is down to our defence.

Under the Doog, Palace became very hard to score against and we were able to soak up pressure and see games out. While he was fixing our back door, the fans were moaning that we were not scoring enough goals.

Well, now we seem to have gone full circle. Only against Hull have we failed to score this season- yet in recent times we have let our opponents back into matches we should have won, and it has cost us dearly.

If teams have trouble scoring against us, in the end they get frustrated, gaps open up allowing us to score more goals on the break. Holloway needs to sure up our defence again, and get Palace playing possession football after we have taken the lead.

I agree with MonthePalace that all the January fixtures are winnable- all Holloway needs to do is stop us conceding sloppy goals.

Oh, and I would add that I don't agree with Hastings in that I do hope we hang on to Wilf.

It is not just his own contribution we need to think about- his reputation has allowed him to suck in defenders which in turn has made him a fantastic foil for Murray and Bolasie to exploit (who, for my money, has been every bit as exciting as Zaha). We do not want to disturb a formula which has allowed Palace to score so many goals.

We have the best partnership between wingers in the league in Bolasie and Zaha. Long may it continue.

Of course Zaha wants to play in the Premiership. The only way he is going to persuade the big clubs to make the sort of offer we would consider accepting is by continuing to play Championship full-backs off the park.

...and another thing... !

All of this transfer speculation about Zaha is bemusing- the stand out players of the season at Palace are Murray and the legendary Speroni.

I suppose we could afford to lose Zaha- but we can forget about promotion if lose either one of the other two.

That's it lads, someone else can comment now!

CIE
I can agree with the defensive lapses and this must certainly be addressed asap. We would be laughing now if we had managed to hang on to leads under Ollie.

Where Wilf is concerned, what you said would hold water and I can agree if he is actually up for it and playing like he can do. Trouble is, he isn't and hasn't been and in fact how would he continue if he was told he isn't going anywhere?
I have seen him against Millwall and Brighton and he wasn't playing like you would expect and I never miss a kick on the radio or Player and he just aint putting it in lately.
I would be more sorry to see Bolasie go tbh as he is by far the better alround package for me (albeit his shooting is pretty wayward).
Better to get a decent amount now before he starts getting bench time with us and his value decreases as it could start to go this way if his attitude doesn't improve I would say.

I completely agree with everything CIE says. Give DF credit for a rock solid defence and IH for an incisive attack. If only we can get the defence functioning again, we've cracked it. Get it sorted Ian!

If we are going to have another goalfest soon, I hope it's against Bolton - not because I want to humiliate Dougie but because it's another rare visit to SP for me!

Happy New Year everyone!

I don't agree that DF would have stopped these late goals. Just look at what's happening at Bolton. I think we would have got those results with DF in charge. Maybe worse! We didn't always cope with the pressure and how many late goals did we concede under DF?

Some of those goals were poor defending and some were bad luck e.g. the 2nd Forest goal. Maybe the expectation has caught up with the players?

Ever since Zaha's England debut he's not been beating players like he did at the start. This might be because he is now marked by 2 or 3 defenders. I think if we lost Zaha the same thing would happen to Bolasie.

Williams will be back soon and hopefully he can stay fit!

Why would we need Paul Hart back here, we have Ian Holloway, and he's doing an OK job.

Sorry NOT Paul Hart but Paul Holden. At the start of the season we were all talking doom and gloom and impending relegation but he said about play-offs.

Then again last time he was on here he was going on about his predictions. Maybe not then!

How sad was that.

^^^^^^^^^