The lowdown on Crystal Palace 3 Millwall 1 – Red card killed chance of FA Cup spectacle
Crystal Palace beat 10-man Millwall 3-1 to reach the quarter-finals of the FA Cup on Saturday afternoon.
Here is the lowdown on the match.
THE LINE-UPS
Palace: Turner, Munoz (Clyne 90), Lacroix, Guehi, Richards, Chilwell, Hughes (Wharton 65), Lerma (Devenny 90), Eze (Franca 85), Sarr (Esse 65), Mateta (Nketiah 15).
Subs not used: Henderson, Mitchell, Kamada.
Millwall: Roberts, Cooper, Tanganga, Harding, Bryan, Azeez (Emakhu 85), Saville (Mitchell 66), De Norre (Honeyman 66), Cundle (Jensen 13), Neghli (Bangura-Williams 33), Coburn (Ivanovic 66).
Subs: Sturge, Wallace, Wintle.
SNAPSHOT OF THE GAME
After a lively start at Selhurst Park, the tempo of the game was killed off after Liam Roberts produced a reckless challenge outside the box on Jean-Philippe Mateta.
Referee Michael Oliver was sent to the VAR screen and issued Roberts with a straight red card.
Palace had chances to make their man advantage count and finally capitalised after 33 minutes when Japhet Tanganga turned Will Hughes’ cross back into the danger zone into his own net.
Daniel Munoz added a second in the 40th minute when Billy Mitchell cleared the ball into Tanganga, with Munoz profiting and having the simple task of putting the ball beyond Jensen.
Millwall pulled one back before half-time when Femi Azeez’s cross was pushed along the face of goal by Matt Turner, with the ball falling to Wes Harding to score.
Glasner brought on Romain Esse and Adam Wharton to try and get a foothold back in the game and the tie was wrapped up with 10 minutes left to play when Eddie Nketiah looped a header over Jensen.
TACTICAL APPROACH
The game looked to be an interesting battle, with Mateta set to go up against Tanganga and Jake Cooper, but any early tactical fight was out of the window following the Roberts red card.
Palace completely dominated most the first half with wing-backs Chilwell and Munoz both experiencing a lot of joy down the flanks and space to expose.
Millwall got back into the game when Alex Neil brought on Ra’ees Bangura-Williams and changed shape to a back five.
The change, combined with Palace dropping their intensity level, allowed the Lions to cut out the space for Palace’s wing-backs and gave Azzez more moments on the ball.
STAR MAN
Nketiah. The former Arsenal striker looked lively throughout after coming on to replace Mateta.
Put Palace through to the quarter-finals with a looped effort over Jensen.
With Mateta more than likely going to miss the Ipswich game next Saturday, having had 25 stitches, Palace are going to need their £30million striker to lead the line in the Premier League.
BEST MOMENT
Full-time. In what could have been a feisty South London derby with passion and intensity, the game felt quite flat and lacked a real spark.
TALKING POINTS DOWN THE PUB
The tackle. Without doubt the conversation after the game from both home and away fans would have been Roberts’ challenge on Mateta.
The man advantage made it far too comfortable for Premier League Palace and the lack of intensity really killed any chance of a cup classic.
WHAT THE BOSS’ HAD TO SAY
Glasner: “I hope you can understand that it’s tough for me to talk about the game.
“It’s hard for me to talk about the tactical side of things. We wanted to go to the quarter-finals, which we achieved.
“I don’t feel happiness today. There is sadness and doubt about how serious JP’s injury is.
“My fingers are crossed that he can play in the quarter-finals. That is in four weeks, so we all hope it’s not that serious.”
Neil: “With 11 men we had moments when we were going to try and play and try to work ourselves up the pitch – that got taken away after five minutes.
“If I had tried to do that with 10 men, in my opinion, I would have basically just handed the game to Crystal Palace and said: ‘Here, go and score four or five goals because we’re too open’.
“That changed the way we had to go about it – we were much more direct and it wasn’t a feast for the eyes in any way, shape or form. I’m fully aware of that but my job is to give my team the best chance of staying in the game.”