Just as reports started surfacing that Oliver Glasner had until the approaching international break to safeguard a job he started so brilliantly only eight months ago, so Crystal Palace go and win successive games.
Whether this turns out to be a Pyrrhic win, on a night when they lost Eberechi Eze and Adam Wharton to injury, remains to be seen but Daichi Kamada’s goal midway through the second half enabled Palace to reach the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup for only the second time in 21 years and, perhaps just as importantly, renew their confidence for the Premier League challenges ahead.
Eze had given a strong-looking Palace team the lead before Jhon Durán equalised for a much-changed Aston Villa but, despite losing two of their best players to first-half injury, Glasner’s team rallied to follow up their first league victory of the season on Sunday with this triumph. They will head back to the West Midlands in good heart for a bottom-four clash with Wolves on Saturday.
Palace had finished last season with six victories in their last seven games, culminating in a 5-0 thrashing of a Villa side still celebrating qualifying for the Champions League. Back then, Glasner was being heralded across the south of London and beyond. But the abject start to this campaign had soon reversed that – until the past few days.
Unai Emery launched a staunch defence of his decision to make 10 changes. For Villa, this competition was clearly fourth on his priority list. Getting 90 minutes for Tyrone Mings and Boubacar Kamara, on their first starts since sustaining anterior cruciate ligament injuries last season, was more important to the Villa manager.
“We started with 11 players in the squad of the first team,” Emery said. “I don’t know if I can have any regrets. We are building a team. Today we compete, we lost, but we compete with the idea the players could get the performance.
“After this result of course we are disappointed and we are frustrated but if I am repeating this match again 100 times I am playing with the same players.”
Glasner was calm and measured after the defeat at Nottingham Forest last week and he remained so after this victory, despite the hullabaloo of speculation in between.
“I think it’s the media world [in England],” he said. “You had one story a day [in Germany] and now you have five, six stories a day. The morning story, no one is interested in [by] the evening. It’s not just football, and football like any part [of the news] is an accelerator.
“Sometimes you marry and get divorced in a game three times, and you hope you never do that in real life. Football is always an up and down. I always have trust in our players, trust in our work and we always had a great togetherness with a really great group of players.”
The return of Mings to the starting lineup after his 445-day absence from first-team action provided Villa with a fillip even before the game kicked off. Within half an hour, however, notwithstanding the teams trading a goal apiece, it was withdrawals through injury that were most ailing Palace.
To lose one England midfielder to injury early in a Carabao Cup tie can appear a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. Eze asked to be withdrawn after straining a hamstring, though Glasner is uncertain how serious it is; Wharton took to the turf, also without a Villa player in his vicinity, with his recurring groin problem. It seemed as if Palace were being dealt a cruel return for their ambition. Clubs get mullered for fielding weaker teams in the cups but at least Palace fans can celebrate.
Eze had headed Palace into the lead in the eighth minute as an all-changed Villa back line stood back and allowed him the freedom of the Holte End penalty area to head in Daniel Muñoz’s cross from the right.
Tottenham v Manchester United
Arsenal v Crystal Palace
Newcastle v Brentford
Southampton v Liverpool
Ties are scheduled to be played in the week commencing 16 December
Among those convinced they can earn more Premier League minutes, Durán followed up goals on his previous starts this season against Wycombe and Bologna with his eighth of the season midway through the half. Leon Bailey’s pull-back invited Durán to stretch for the ball and drag his shot into the corner of the net, the debutant Matt Turner getting a weak hand to the ball.
Kamada scored his second goal for the club after his move from Lazio in the summer, a vehement low finish from the edge of the penalty area, after Diego Carlos had played a loose ball after a goal‑kick out of John McGinn’s reach.
