Swansea City 1 Crystal Palace 1
Swansea Wilfried Bony 15
C Palace Mile Jedinak 25 pen
Crystal Palace's midfielder Mile Jedinak scored from a penalty against SwanseaOne manager admits he still has his L-plates on, the other has collected his bus pass, and it was the senior citizen who was smiling after his Crystal Palace team had battled Swansea to a stalemate.
Neil Warnock, 65 years young, still kicks every ball his players contest, and Saturday’s scrap bore his endlessly combative hallmark.
The Swans took an early lead with Wilfried Bony’s sixth goal in his past seven Premier League appearances, at which stage they seemed set for a routine win, but Palace dug deep and fought back in spirited fashion, their competitive resolve rewarded with the point gained by Mile Jedinak’s penalty.
As was the case last season, Palace possess the collective attitude needed to stay up. Swansea, however, have now dropped 13 points from winning positions and will need to play better against Queen’s Park Rangers on Tuesday night if they are to stay on track for a top-10 finish.
Garry Monk, still short of his first anniversary as the Swans’ manager, preferred to “accentuate the positives”, as he put it. He said: “I’m looking at the 19 points we’ve got, which is a great total, rather than those we’ve lost. We’ve performed well in every game. We started this one very well, controlled the game and had our chances, but it wasn’t to be.”
Unsurprisingly, Palace were unchanged after their uplifting victory over Liverpool last weekend – a much-needed result after taking one point from their previous five matches.
Swansea settled quickly into their slick passing game, one typical early attack seeing Jefferson Montero accelerate to the byline on the left before delivering a cross that Bony touched over the bar.
Palace were under pressure and conceded after a quarter of an hour when Gylfi Sigurdsson’s through ball enabled Bony to turn smartly in a central position, 15 yards out, before shooting with deadly precision into Julián Speroni’s right-hand corner.
Palace’s cause was hardly helped by the loss of their leading scorer Dwight Gayle, whose leg injury forced him to give way to James McArthur.
Nevertheless they were level again after 25 minutes when their first attack of any consequence saw Shelvey bring down Marouane Chamakh in front of goal for Jedinak to make short work of the penalty.
They might even have taken the lead three minutes later when Lukasz Fabianski denied Chamakh in the act of shooting.
Yannick Bolasie’s strike from out on the left grazed the crossbar and, temporarily, the initiative had changed hands.
Montero ought to have put that right before half-time, but shot tamely at Speroni with the time and space available in which to have done much better.
Ditto Shelvey who, alone in the six-yard box, volleyed horribly wide with the goal at his mercy.
Nothing if not persistent, Shelvey might have restored Swansea’s advantage early in the second half, but his volley was too close to Speroni’s body.
In contrast, Sigurdsson, with a volley of his own from the edge of the penalty area, tested the Palace goalkeeper’s reflexes to the full. The Icelander, shooting from left to right, was tantalisingly close to settling it.
Swansea had plenty of possession and no shortage of scoring chances, but Palace defended assiduously throughout and deserved parity.
Warnock said: “The first 20 minutes was as bad as I’ve seen us play. We couldn’t pass water and I was wondering if it was going to be double figures, but you have to give us credit – after that we gave as good as we got and might have pinched it. The players may be limited in some areas, but they are a good, honest bunch.”
