PARDEW AGONY AS SWANS WIN A NINE-GOAL THRILLER
Palace boss is on the brink after supersub Llorente has laugh with double in sensational finale
WHEN it was all done, Alan Pardew stared at the ground, shook his head, stared, shook his head again and thought some more. How, what, why? The glorious insanity of football might just have broken him.
To his right, Bob Bradley started to say something to his coach Alan Curtis, but just burst into laughter. What an absurd day for transforming careers, reputations and, quite possibly, clubs.
This was the must-win game that Crystal Palace had won at 1-0, and then had lost at 3-1 down, and then had won again at 4-3 up.
But what happened next was bonkers in its brilliance and in its horror, with Swansea making it 4-4 through Fernando Llorente in the first minute of stoppage time and 5-4 via the same man two minutes later.
There were seven goals from the 66th minute, four after the 82nd, each a game changer, each a kick in the teeth of devastating force for one manager or the other.
These were a pair of men and a pair of clubs that needed something, anything, from this match, with Palace beaten in their previous five and Swansea winless in Bradley’s first five.
Pardew is dangerously close to the sack and will likely need something from the next two games against Southampton and Hull to keep his job. By contrast, Bradley’s personal situation was not nearly so dire, but Swansea’s was far worse than Palace’s and already there have been questions asked over the American’s suitability to manage in the Premier League.
Quite justifiably, he allowed himself a smile as he took in the madness of the result, saying: ‘I think it is a turning point for us in many ways. Sometimes you just need something crazy that changes your luck.
‘You don’t win matches like that every day but we got it this time. The players will get an extra day off for that and they earned that.’
He admitted there is still serious work to be done — of course there is, given this was only Swansea’s second win of the season and their first since the opening day. But at times they have appeared crushed by the awful experiences of the past few months and so this win at least gives them a fighting chance.
Pardew can’t cling to momentum of any sort. Palace already had the worst points ratio of any team in English football in 2016 and this defeat highlighted why — they simply cannot defend. Not even close. Four of the goals came from setpieces, making it 13 such goals for the season. They would barely do worse if they were blindfolded.
The 55-year-old is not one to suffer from lack of confidence but he knows his job is under threat.
He said: ‘Scrutiny comes with the territory. The goals we conceded don’t reflect well on us. For me personally I’ll do what I always do, reflect on this game and try and correct it for the next one.
‘But six defeats has put us in this mess. We need to get ourselves out of it. I feel I can turn it around. But we need to get a victory quickly.’
His anger with his defence was obvious. ‘I can’t really defend my defenders, they needed to stand up and be better than that,’ he said. ‘The last 20 minutes was as crazy as I have ever seen. If we can’t defend at 4-3 with about six minutes on the clock, then I’m afraid that’s not good enough. We just can’t seem to defend set-plays.’
Factor in a serious-looking knee injury for Connor Wickham and it was truly a wretched day for Palace. Yet it had all started so well, with Swansea barely managing a sniff of a chance for half an hour and Palace leading after 19 minutes when the home defence made a mess of dealing with a long ball by Scott Dann and Wilfried Zaha finished. Swansea’s equaliser 17 minutes later was a mixture of luck and quality, with Jack Cork fortunate to win a freekick after bouncing off Jason Puncheon. Pardew was unhappy with the decision and was probably right; Sigurdsson beat Wayne Hennessey from 20 yards to make it worse. From there, Swansea scored twice through Leroy Fer, in the 66th and 68th minutes, and both were similar with Sigurdsson set-pieces causing havoc and Fer finishing each from close range to make it 3-1.
Then the first bout of madness. James Tomkins finished from close range on 75 minutes and it was game on, before Jack Cork deflected a Zaha shot over Lukasz Fabianski for 3-3.
That was barmy enough, with Pardew screaming ‘come on’ into the sky, but then it went up a notch in the 84th minute with a Christian Benteke volley crashing in off the post.
Bradley almost hit the deck in horror and Swansea fans poured out. It should have been over, but it wasn’t.
Over to Llorente, a Spanish substitute who has won the World Cup and struggles to get a game for a club fighting relegation. Two goals in stoppage time changed his narrative, changed this game and almost brought two managers to their knees.
How absurd and how brilliant and how galling, depending on your point of view.