Last time out for Crystal Palace against Southampton, the Eagles looked to be on their way to recording back-to-back wins having already dispatched West Ham on Boxing Day.
James Tomkins’ superb header – which crashed in off the crossbar – had handed the south Londoners the lead in the 50th minute, although one moment of madness from another Palace defender ultimately meant that Roy Hodgson’s side travelled back to SE25 with just one point in the bag.
What happened? Well, with just over 15 minutes remaining, Danny Ings grabbed an equaliser in the 74th minute after latching on to a loose back pass from Martin Kelly, who couldn’t have weighted the ball any better for the Southampton striker to score – Ings didn’t even need to take a touch before firing past Vicente Guaita.
That mistake drew angry criticism from these Palace supporters on Twitter, with some of those within the article calling the former Liverpool defender a “muppet” and a “liability”.
Now, that is truly, truly harsh on a player who has largely been outstanding this season.
At the start of December, we outlined just how effective the England international has been for the Eagles.
As of December 9th, Palace had won six of the nine games that Kelly had started, conceding just three goals in the process, which makes for excellent reading in terms of the 29-year-old’s impact.
Additionally, with most of those outings coming at centre-back, the Palace No.34 then stepped up to fill in at right-back after Joel Ward – the club’s only senior right-back – suffered an injury, a position that Kelly doesn’t look as comfortable in due to his lack of balance and also his lack of pace.
However, ever since he started his first game at right-back this term in a 2-0 win over Burnley on November 30th in the post-Ward era, Kelly has helped the Eagles keep two more clean sheets and obtain nine points from the last six Premier League outings, doing so with excellent professionalism and maturity – he even won the WhoScored Man of the Match award for his performance against Bournemouth, in which Palace had ten men for over 70 minutes.
If there’s any Palace player who deserves to be let off for a mistake this season, it’s Kelly.
In other news, it could be humiliating for Palace and Hodgson if this Premier League side are allowed to sign this striker…
