Well I had no confidence to put across my opinion on it properly as I only watch highlights of Palace now and any edge i would normally glean from watching the full 90 mins has gone, because i play football myself on a Saturday now, vying for the semi pro leagues (not near them yet, probs never will be).
Hugely distorted defence from what i have seen. We have a centre back playing right back (Kelly), a right back playing left back (Ward), a defender way past his prime and has been an on and off liability (Hangeland). We bought a left back in Zeki Fryers who can't even make our bench and is our only recognised left back at the club.
Last year we had Mariappa, Delaney, Dann and Ward for our solid defence, and I am not sure we have put that out once which is a shame and adds to the instability.
Ledley has dropped off form and has become anonymous. Jedinak is often our main man, but he is often made to look silly when those around him aren't working hard enough defensively. Often Boalsie/Zaha/Puncheon have made silly defensive errors that would rarely happen under Pulis, but happen with increasing regularity at the moment.
We generally are a bright spark going forward though and would offer any team in this division trouble, but struggle against teams that sit back as our wingers can't get in behind forcing us to shoot from range which we can't as we have no real threat, or bombard the oppo with aerial crosses, but we often never do that and Campbell spearheads our line anyway and he's relatively small. We could always work off of the second balls in these circumstances but we never try hard enough. What we often do instead in these circumstances like tonight, is pass to feet to the edge of the box where the striker trying to keep the ball is harassed by many defenders and we lose the ball quickly. I suppose though, when teams sit back it can be tough for anyone to break anyone down, but if we ourselves aren't solid defensively then we are not going to prosper.
The real worry is our defensive base has really left us and it needs to come back. It has been present sparingly under Warnock but not with the same regularity as under Pulis, even though we have similar personnel.
The weight of expectancy at being huge favourites to win tonight may have played a big role, but the goals we conceded were all avoidable and i wouldn't probably be talking about them anyway if Campbell gets given his justified penalty 26 seconds in. I really think Palace would have went on to punish Sunderland if they went 1-0 up so quickly, with them having to expand.
Prognosis is that I think Palace will be fine but I am worried for the first time this season that there is a legitimate chance we could go down. I think the changes are relatively simple to make to add the defensive stability and Warnock will get to the bottom of it, but won't if he plays favourites with the likes of Kelly who probably doesn't warrant his position.
I did make the prediction of 40+ points under Pulis, however, Warnock has to fuck up quite badly not to get that with the talent he has in attacking positions by the end of the season.
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