Damien Delaney has admitted Crystal Palace have been left clinging desperately to the points gathered before Christmas as a team who had briefly aspired to qualify for European football find themselves labouring to preserve their Premier League status.
The 2-1 home defeat to Liverpool, confirmed in stoppage time when Delaney was penalised for a foul on Christian Benteke to earn the visitors the decisive penalty, extended Palace's winless league sequence to 12 games. They have gathered only four points in that time to plunge from joint fourth on Christmas Day to 15th in the table, nine points off the bottom three, despite mustering wins over Southampton, Stoke and Tottenham Hotspur to progress into the FA Cup quarter-finals.
The gap from the relegation places does provide a buffer with only Newcastle below them having a game in hand - a home fixture against Manchester City - though Sunday's late surrender, having been 1-0 up against 10 men for the last 28 minutes, has damaged confidence further.
“That’s the best we’ve played for a long time, so you kind of ask yourself: ‘What do we have to do to win a game?’” Delaney said. “But we plough on, there’s not much we can do about it. We still have a nine-point cushion to the bottom three: not ideal but we’ve just got to get on with it.
“It is a big gap and there are a lot of teams involved in it and all of them would need to go on a bit of a run. The way we’re playing, it has to turn, it has to turn. I’ve played in teams where we’ve been bad and we’ve been getting battered, this team haven’t. We’ve been pretty OK, average, but good enough to get better results than we have done and it has to start turning for us. Hopefully this will be a turning point. Lord, Jesus, it’s unbelievable. Just thank God we accumulated so many points so early in the season.
“You look at some of the goals that have gone in against us: the deflection for the first against Sunderland; Borini’s equaliser the other night? nine times out of 10 that doesn’t even go near going in. So I don’t know, maybe someone’s put a spell or something on us possibly.
“But you can’t feel sorry for yourselves. It’s done. Whether we win or we lose, we draw a line under it, go back to the training ground and start again. It’s a short turnaround to Reading on Friday in the FA Cup and, if we can reproduce the way we played for most of the Liverpool game, we’ll be fairly confident we can get a result there.”
Delaney had reacted with dismay to concede the late penalty against Liverpool, an award questioned by Alan Pardew who argued Benteke had dived with the touch on his left heel not worthy of his tumble to the turf. The defender waited over an hour after the final whistle to speak with Andre Marriner and his assistant, Scott Ledger, and took to social media on Sunday evening to suggest he had been told by the referee his instinct had been not to give the spot-kick but that "he trusted his linesman that much that he awarded it".
“I didn’t feel any contact so I was quite surprised but it is what it is,” the centre-back when asked about the incident. “It’s a big decision so late in the game. The referee initially gave a goalkick and it was only afterwards I saw people running towards the linesman. It is what it is, he’s given it, there’s not much we can do.
“There’s no way the linesman could have been 100 per cent sure. He gave it so quick as well. The lads were watching afterwards: he’s flagging before Benteke’s even hit the ground. It looks like he couldn’t wait to give it - it looked like he wanted to give it - and it just kind of sums us up at the moment.
“There have been a few occasions in the last few games where Wilfried Zaha’s been involved in tussles [and nothing has been awarded], and yet this was a game-changing decision. I didn’t think it was a penalty at all. Benteke’s said he’s felt it or whatever, but it’s done now. There’s no point crying about it.”
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