ALLEN’S DOUBLE AS CITY TURN ON STYLE AT PALACE
REMI ALLEN’S BRACE HELPS BEATS HOSTS
LEICESTER City made it back-toback FA Women’s Championship wins with a 4-1 victory over Crystal Palace at Hayes Lane, writes Tom Dean, of Sportsbeat.
Palace took an early lead through Cherelle Khassal, but after Amy Taylor was sent off Natasha Flint and Lachante Paul were able to score in between Remi Allen’s double to hand the spoils to the visitors.
The hosts made the perfect start when Bianca Baptiste’s low cross made its way to Khassal, who slotted home after just four minutes.
Palace then had the chance to extend their lead when Baptiste found herself one-on-one with Kirstie Levell, but the effort was well saved by the Foxes stopper.
But Leicester soon grew into the game with Charlie Devlin and Esmee de Graaf both going close, before Flint crashed an effort on to the crossbar.
The visitors were then handed a numerical advantage when Taylor was sent off for a rash tackle on Sophie Howard.
It did not take long for the Foxes to capitalise as Devlin used her pace and trickery to work a yard of space in the box and square for Allen to flick in the equaliser.
Just a minute later, the turnaround was completed as Flint made up for her earlier misfiring with an unstoppable drive past Chloe Morgan.
Paige Bailey-Gayle had a golden opportunity to keep the scoring going immediately after half-time, but her effort was straight at Morgan.
Morgan then produced the save of the match to tip Paul’s effort on to the post, but minutes later Leicester had their third when the winger turned home Flint’s saved shot.
Palace struggled to create any serious goal threat and things went from bad to worse when Lia Cataldo picked out Allen for her second and the three points.
Leicester defender Ashleigh Plumptre said: “We played so well against Liverpool and we just wanted to keep that going.
“When we play the big teams we are always up for it but then when we play the teams we should be beating we have a tendency to drop down to their level.
“I think we created really good chances today and we probably should have had more but we didn’t let off for the whole of the 90 minutes. As a centre-back I think me and Sophie had things covered but their two forwards pressed us quite a lot so it helped when one got sent off.
“We could afford to step up a bit higher and made life difficult for them because they had to sit deeper.”
Crystal Palace defender Annabel Johnson said: “That’s a tough day at the office. We started well and have been starting well as a team lately but conceding four goals at home isn’t good enough.
“Playing an entire half with 10 players is hard for sure but it’s still very disappointing for us today.
“We can’t blame it on that, though – we had enough time to readjust and adapt but we didn’t.
“We have still got massive belief in this squad and we are scoring way more goals now so we just need to start conceding less.
“We have a couple of weeks of training now which is fantastic and we will go again against Sheffield United.”
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