We need results not pretty football (From Your Local Guardian)

We need results not pretty football

9:47am Thursday 26th August 2010

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Despite the obvious improvement in the calibre of football this season, this week’s results have highlighted some glaring weaknesses.

On Saturday, against a typically Roy Keane Ipswich side, we were quite simply bullied off the pitch.

Yes, we may have played the prettier football at times but the whole performance lacked bite and incision.

The frustration isn’t helped having watched a Palace side that, for the last two-and-a-half-years, benefited from the likes of Clint Hill and Shaun Derry adding their physicality and mental strength to a very young side.

Some may scoff at Derry and Hill, pointing at their age, but I think we are going to notice this season just how big an influence these two players had on the team.

After all they were the captain and vice captain.

Last season, we intimidated teams wherever we went, they knew they had been in a game and our young players were offered some protection.

You can’t rely on referee’s to protect your young or more flamboyant players in this league, it‘s naïve to think we don’t need a bit more muscle in the team.

Now we’ve lost that side of our game and are immediately seeing Owen Garvan being targeted for rough treatment throughout the Ipswich game and Wilfried Zaha being kicked up in the air at Portsmouth until he lashed out and saw red.

This slight naivety has also manifested itself in the performances thus far when it comes to our style of play.

Some of our football in the first half of the Ipswich and Pompey games was sublime but in both games we laboured in front of goal before being hit by a sucker punch.

Building play from the back and patiently passing the ball around is fine when you’re on level terms but not when you’re a goal down with 20 minutes to go.

We quickly ran out of ideas and it became evident there was no plan B.

And because we were unable to switch to a more direct approach we became predictable and Ipswich were able to pick us off in midfield and ultimately looked the more likely in the closing stages.

The sale of Alan Lee won’t do anything to eradicate these issues either.

Lee’s an effective striker at this level and offered us something different to the likes of Zaha, Obika and Counago.

And for the £350,000 fee can George Burley really go out and replace him with the proven a goalscorer we desperately need?

Of course it’s not all doom and gloom, we have looked very good for periods of games but if we don’t become a bit savvier and find a cutting edge in the final third, we could struggle.

• What do you think? Should Palace continue with their passing style or get a bit rougher? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

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