Aren’t we glad to be back to Premier League action!? On second thoughts, perhaps another week’s international break might not have been the worst idea. It’s hard to not be very reactionary after a defeat like this one, where Forest squandered enough chances to win more than one game.
Despite a total of 3.34 xG (recalculated after the game by Opta after the initial total of 2.98), Forest were unable to put the ball in the net for a second time through a period of complete domination in the first half.
It shouldn’t be ignored though that there will be players in all of the position groups who will have been sat on the coach home last night disappointed with some of their actions. Yes, perhaps the poor close-range shots by Delap and then Ndoye are more egregious than the mistakes leading to Palace’s goals, but they’re all equally as damaging in a game where we saw Forest’s best spell of football since Sunderland away in April.
Analysing Crystal Palace’s Goals
I don’t think there’s too much I can say on those aforementioned misses that hasn’t already been said - there was a real lack of composure from Delap when he really should’ve calmly scored a rebound, and then also from Ndoye (although his chance was more difficult and at least he had already scored a really nice opening goal).
So instead, I’ll delve into what happened at the other end. On the whole this season, Forest have defended fairly well and put up some of the best defensive numbers in the league. Despite the early goal though, I didn’t feel like Forest had any real control in the game until after the 10th minute.
Murillo has pushed up here to try and regain the ball after McAtee’s pass is intercepted, 5 seconds later Palace are essentially 3 v 2 on the edge of the Forest box. This is not how Glasner wants Forest to play, particularly when they have the lead.
To the team’s credit, for the next half an hour they assumed total control. From that moment in the screenshot, Forest put up 1.85 xG in the following 29 minutes, to Palace’s 0 - outshooting them 11-0. But after Delap’s miss, Palace had the next 3 shots, all on target, and two of them resulting in goals.
For the first goal, Daniel Muñoz makes a couple of poor actions that put Forest on the back foot. That’s followed up by Ola Aina being far too attracted to the ball. He’s already in an advanced position anyway, and had regularly been jumping out of the line with some success in turning the ball over - but not on this occasion.
Aina doesn’t really know who to cover, and ends up being bypassed really easily by quick movement of the ball from Palace. Schlager also does a poor job in not tracking the run of Timber who has a big part to play in the goal.
In this second clip, you can see the dilemma that Diomande has. Glasner’s back 5 is designed to allow for one of the wider centre backs to push out, whilst the other two shuffle across to make it a temporary back 4 - with Aina already high, when Murillo goes out as well, Diomande has two attackers to worry about.
Another disappointment here, is the amount of Forest defenders who are just standing around watching this happen. Aina (who has done this before, most memorably at Man City away last season), Muñoz & Schlager all don’t seem interested enough here as the play develops. It’s unlikely that any of them can actually stop this goal, but it’s certainly not a good look to stand and watch it happen, when any footballer will tell you that a tiny amount of pressure can change a player’s decision making.
For Palace’s second goal, there’s not much I can really say about it apart from point out how poor the man-marking effort from Gibbs-White is here. He doesn’t really want to engage physically with Lerma, and by the time the ball reaches his head, he’s a yard away from Gibbs-White who has his back to the ball.
For a long time now I’ve been suggesting Gibbs-White shouldn’t be given man-marking roles, it doesn’t suit his aerial strengths. We know he’s a good header of the ball and will battle to get to a ball first, but ask him to engage against physically stronger opponents in this kind of manner, and it’s just not his game.
For me, Gibbs-White is a prime candidate for a zonal man-marking role - this was an issue last season when Dyche initially took charge, and one of the things Dyche actually got right was moving Gibbs-White to a zonal role.
The third and final Crystal Palace goal also isn’t pretty viewing, and unfortunately Gibbs-White has a small role to play in this one as well. Twice the ball gets played into his feet, and twice he isn’t able to make it stick or find a team mate as Canvot gets the better of him.