Alan Pardew’s name was on the car park list and everyone’s lips before the game as Crystal Palace’s manager in waiting came to evaluate his prospective charges prior to his impending appointment as Neil Warnock’s successor.
The recently departed Newcastle United manager took his seat in the stands back at the ground where he enjoyed his most celebrated moment in a Palace shirt almost a quarter of a century ago when scoring an extra-time FA Cup semi-final winner over Liverpool.
Lunching in Villa luxury before kick-off, Pardew sat next to Kevin Blackwell, one of Warnock’s coterie of coaches, during the match as Keith Millen took charge of the team again in his third stint as caretaker manager.
Neither could doubt Palace’s resilience as they ground out another goalless draw to add to Sunday’s at Queens Park Rangers. With the bottom five all avoiding defeat, it was also a necessary point.
But Palace have failed to score in five of their last six away games so perhaps this was not such a surprising result, and Wilfried Zaha gave another anodyne performance that illustrated why Pardew will seek to sign a proven striker as and when he takes over.
That is likely to be on Friday, in time to take the press conference before the FA Cup tie with Dover Athletic, if the fine details, thought to be concerning his backroom staff, can be ironed out.
Villa’s own goalscoring problems have been well documented, mainly because they do not appear in any danger of going away. They had failed to score in 10 of their 19 games at the halfway stage of this season, a run that included three of their previous four games, and in 38 of Paul Lambert’s 95 league games at the helm, a 40% failure rate that is the worst in the Premier League in that period.
At least Lambert had the luxury of recalling Gabriel Agbonlahor to play in a three-man front line, with Andreas Weimann also supporting Christian Benteke, who had scored the winning goal at Selhurst Park when these teams met a month ago.
Starting five points above the relegation zone, Villa knew that this and the next league game, away to Leicester City, had extra significance in their bid to stay safe as they then face Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea in succession.
They certainly started very positively, Benteke drawing a sharp save low at his near post from Julian Speroni after a swift-passing move from kick-off before Palace had touched the ball.
Then Speroni posted a further reminder of his worth with a brilliant save in the same vicinity as Alan Hutton came dashing in, when a cross pinballed off Joel Ward, and looked certain to score. But Villa’s fortunes suffered a dip when Ron Vlaar, their captain only returned from a long-standing calf injury, had to limp off with only 14 minutes gone, to be replaced by Ciaran Clark.
If Pardew will have been impressed with anything in Palace’s tepid opening to the game, it was their pace on the break, and when Zaha dispossessed Leandro Bacuna in the centre circle, Yannick Bolaisie dashed away, past Clark, only to lift his shot against the crossbar from the edge of the penalty area as he went face to face with Brad Guzan.
Villa attempted to regain the initiative at the start of the second half, Benteke leaping powerfully only to head Bacuna’s corner tamely wide. But the home crowd grew impatient and Palace threatened on the break, Carlos Sánchez having to make a last-ditch tackle to prevent James McArthur opening the scoring. At the other end, Agbonlahor headed over as the game swung end to end, Benteke scythed a shot just above the bar from Sanchez’s pull-back and Speroni parrying Bacuna’s swerving free-kick three minutes from time.
Guardian
