Rondon rises to the occasion but Palace rue miss
WELL, at least Alan Pardew knows what’s top of his to-do list this week. Crystal Palace need a striker and, on this evidence, there is no time to waste.
They drew a worrying blank here on what was a disappointing start to their Premier League season. It wasn’t necessarily that West Brom had the greater cutting edge going forward but they had just enough to prevail.
Both of these sides struggled desperately for goals last season — indeed, only bottom club Aston Villa scored fewer — and Palace face a season of struggle if they don’t get a couple of deals sewn up this week.
West Brom’s winner exposed fragility at the back, too, as Salomon Rondon was allowed to dart in between Scott Dann and Damien Delaney to soar and score with a flicked header past Wayne Hennessey.
Coming just 16 minutes from time, it was a hammer-blow for Palace, who didn’t have the ability to break down a resolute Albion defence. Pardew threw Yannick Bolasie and then Yohan Cabaye but to no avail.
The situation will only get worse if, as expected, Bolasie completes his £25million switch to Everton next week. The Selhurst Park faithful tried to show their love by singing his name but the Congolese has evidently had his head turned.
Pardew said: ‘As much as I love him and the fans love him, if his heart and his soul isn’t with us then we have to exchange goodbyes and look to get better.
‘Even with Yala in the side, our record of scoring goals was not great in the second half of last season and we have to address that.
‘That was evident again today and it is the cutting edge that gets us a goal. If we had scored first today, we would have won.’
Instead, Pardew was left to rue the second-half moment when Wilfried Zaha was set free by Chung-Yong Lee and outpaced the pedestrian Albiondefence to break clear.
However, Ben Foster was alert to the threat and raced from his goal to smother Zaha’s shot before the defenders regrouped to snuff out Connor Wickham. ‘He should have scored that in my opinion,’ said Pardew.
But that was as good as it got for Palace, who never looked like outsmarting Tony Pulis’s players and their game plan of rigid organisation and general stubbornness.
Andros Townsend, signed for £13m from Newcastle United, brought high hopes but failed to make any impression on an afternoon of toil.
For Pulis, the away points represented a positive start under the new ownership of Chinese entrepreneur Guochuan Lei, who had paid for 2,000 club scarves for their travelling fans.
With spending money likely to follow, Pulis wants to strengthen his squad and reinforce Albions’s status as the West Midlands’ foremost club.
‘We’re trying to do business, we need to do business,’ he said. ‘The club has a lot of players who’ve been here for a long time — they’ve been fantastic players, been fantastic servants but they need competition. I’ve been here 22 months and the club has stagnated and it needs to get on its front foot. It is the only club in the West Midlands this year in the Premiership. But everybody around the club needed impetus.’
He once again fielded questions on the unsettled Saido Berahino, who has been linked with Stoke, and reiterated that the club’s stance that he won’t be sold remains the same under the new regime.
Berahino was pretty subdued but his strike partner Rondon carried the load, almost opening the scoring with one of the few chances in a drab first half. Hennessey was equal to his downward header, however, following a Craig Gardner cross.
When it mattered, however, Rondon was right on the money.