The signs were there in plain sight at the Liberty Stadium, the ones which suggest this is the end game. They reared with Gylfi Sigurdsson’s every intervention, a player whose influence as scorer and provider had been highlighted on posters pinned up on the walls back at Crystal Palace’s training ground. The pie-charted stats had screamed out a warning that the Icelander had contributed to 53% of Swansea’s goals. And yet, against rivals primed to stifle, here he was scoring the hosts’ first, assisting their fourth, and delivering the three set-plays which provoked such bedlam in the visitors’ pathetic mess of a defence as to ensure dismal defeat was plucked from the jaws of victory. Those percentages will need tweaking.
The clues could be spied just as clearly in Christian Benteke losing his man not once, not twice, but three times at those set-piece deliveries in a team that had apparently spent the bulk of the previous week working feverishly on tightening up at dead-ball situations. One of those errors might be written off as another careless lapse in concentration. Three suggested rather more troubling issues in play, and that the drilling has not worked. A lineup that had prioritised a first clean sheet since April ended up shipping five to a team who had started the weekend bottom and the 18th most prolific side in the division. The message is not sinking in. The same mistakes are being made every week. Discipline is shot to pieces.
Alan Pardew can seek to clear the air with his players this week and might instigate the changes, whether in formation or personnel, he believes can make a difference against Southampton on Saturday. He could even sanction the appointment – tardy, perhaps, given there have now been a damning 13 concessions from set-pieces this season – of a defensive coach to supplement his backroom staff.
But the chaotic unravelling of that performance in south Wales suggested there can be no real way back. There was no evidence on show in Swansea to suggest Palace will be able to summon newfound resilience against Claude Puel’s team. But, even if this side somehow musters even a vaguely positive response in the next two games to appease those dissenting in the stands, the band-aid would be ripped off by defeats in daunting collisions with Manchester United and Chelsea in mid-December.
Those games are both at Selhurst Park, where Palace have beaten only two teams in the league this calendar year. There simply is no respite at present and, while Pardew fights desperately to keep his job, every mini-revival will be played out with that nagging fear that the next dreadful winless sequence is lying in wait round the corner. Players are choking amid the anxiety, succumbing to basic errors where once they would have instinctively made the right choices. Some among the fan-base have pointed to Swansea being this team’s ‘Fulham moment’, a reference to the cataclysmic defensive display offered by Ian Holloway’s selection in a home game against Martin Jol’s side back in October 2013. Palace led, had their optimism punctured by two moments of brilliance, and offered only feeble resistance thereafter. Holloway recognised he was incapable of instigating a revival and walked away. Pardew will not do likewise.
He has too much at stake here. Palace, as he suggested on Friday, are close to his heart, a club with whom he feels a special bond. They were supposed to be the antidote to the poison he experienced up at Newcastle, where he was always considered Mike Ashley’s puppet. He has benefited from the support of his chairman, Steve Parish, and the co-owner remains desperate for the man he appointed almost two years ago to arrest the team’s alarming slide and succeed. The pair are close, and Parish has regularly backed the 55-year-old in talks with the major shareholders, David Blitzer and Josh Harris, over the course of a dreadful year.
He could always point to the upgrade overseen by the management down at Beckenham, or the new level of professionalism introduced to the team’s match-day preparations, as evidence that the infrastructure was on the up as a result of Pardew’s influence. But, critically, those improvements have not been mirrored on the pitch.
There was a logic in seeking to be more expansive with the team’s style this season given Palace had lacked bite in front of goal through most of last term, and the manager had warned on the eve of the campaign that a period of “transition” awaited. But, even if that takes time, a team that used to pride itself on its resilience – albeit born of Tony Pulis’ input – has now been rendered frail, confused and rudderless. It cannot all be down to the absence of a left-footed left-back while Pape Souare continues his rehabilitation after a car crash, even if that has affected the team’s balance. Or the sale of Mile Jedinak, whose status in the dressing-room was significant but whose powers were probably on the wane. But the reality is that Pardew had demanded “four or five” of his players took on leadership duties at Swansea and, if their three-goal recovery in nine minutes hinted at previous strength, they were utterly meek and obliging when it mattered most.
The captain, Scott Dann, fronted up post-match and admitted “we can’t go on like this”. He was talking about the team’s defending but, other than organisation, rebuilding belief feels a considerable task. Aside from all that slackness at the Liberty, just as revealing had been Damien Delaney’s utter non-reaction on the Palace bench as coaching staff tore off in delight to celebrate the team’s equaliser at 3-3. The centre-half, one of those Palace players who remain from their Championship days and a veteran now working under his fifth permanent manager at the club, sat placidly surveying the scene from the back row of the dug-out, beanie hat tugged down and no hint of emotion flickering across his face. Those around him might have been hoodwinked into believing the comeback was gathering pace, but it was as if Delaney could foresee what lay ahead. Faith has been damaged, possibly beyond repair.
