Crystal Palace F.C. - Season 2027/28 - End of the season report
We have finished our 5th season with Crystal Palace, so its time for the season's final report. Let's go through the end of the season in chronological other, rather than by competiton as we usually do.
We continues our journey by a visit to Real Sociedad's Reale Arena as we faced the Basques in the R16 match up in UCL. We started the draw slowly by drawing 1-1 at the away game, but we got a break in the fixture list as we only had to face Bournemouth in the middle of our European matchup. We managed to beat Bournemouth easily and played well at home against Sociedad beating both teams 3-0.
Next up were two PL games against Brentford, who ended up finishing 8th and against Reading, who came last in the league. Neither team posed a serious threat to us, although Brentford had been a diffcult opposiotion for us before.
On the UCL we were drawn against Chelsea. I think its pretty boring to play against domestic teams, but what can you do. Maybe the players were little bored as well, as we lost the 1st game of the tie 2-0 at the Stamford Bridge. We have been performing well at home in Europe, but I wondered if we'd make it too difficult to qualify this time around.
We had to play our main rivals Brighton in the middle of the Chelsea fixtures and as we were pushing the league leading Arsenal on PL, I couldn't rotate too much against the Seagulls. We played one of our best games to date against Brighton, as
Eberechi Eze scored whopping 5 goals and we beat them 8-0. After the game I felt confident we could batter Chelsea in a similar matter and the lads managed to do just that as Chelsea offered little threat to us at the Selhurst Park in a game which we won 5-0.
The league leading Arsenal had enjoyed strong form too but they had drawn one game, whereas we had won all of our games, so we were trailing them by 2 points We would face Arsenal soon, so at this point the title was in our own hands!
The disaster struck on the next game however, as we only got draw against Nottingham in a rather uneventfull game, which was one of our dullest performances over the season. Luckily Arsenal only drew against Newcastle themselves, so we still trailed them by only two points before our meeting.
The game took place at the Emirates Stadium, so we had a tough test ahead of us. Our task turned near impossible as
Aurelién Tchouameni took a second straight red since joining us and I though we had bottled it. However, Eze scored soon after the red card and we managed to grab the win via defensive 4-4-1 system and a bit of luck.
So we had three games left on the PL and the title would be ours if we could just win all the games! Our remaining opponents were Manchester United, Newcastle and Tottenham, so the task wasn't going to be easy.
After Arsenal we faced Manchester City on the UCL semi-finals and this time we started the tie at home. We only managed to draw our home game after
Erling Haaland capitalised from our easy mistake and our strikers could only score once despite having plenty of chances. To make matters worse, we lost our first choice goalkeeper
Giorgi Mamardashvili for rest of the season due to broken hand.
We had a very difficult game against Manchester United next and despite the fact that both teams generated near 2,00 worth of xG, the game only saw one goal, which was luckily from
Elye Wahi for the good guys! At the same time Arsenal won their game 4-3 agains Leicester via 90+2 minute winner, so they weren't giving up either.
Next up was the second leg of the UCL semi-finals against Manchester City. As against United, both teams got around 2,00 goals of xG, but this time the Mancunians got the better end of the bargain, and won 3-2. I hoped to get back to the final after last years extra-time disappointment, but as we were two games away from winning the league, there was no room for sadness.
Our penultimate game of the season was away at Newcastle and the lads were eager to put our defeat against Man City behind them as we took an early 0-2 lead via Wahi and
João Veloso, whose debut season has been average at best considering his talent. Harvey Barnes scored for Newcastle at the 90th minute, but we won the game and at the same time Arsenal were kept to scoreless draw against Aston Villa at Emirates, we were leading the league by three points and had much better goal difference than Arsenal thanks to batterings of Brighton and Reading.
On the final day of the season Arsenal faced our main rivals in Brighton and we faced their fiercest rivals in Tottenham, so there were for some mixed feelings amongst the oppostions fans for sure.
Wahi scored soon after the game started and the Arsenal academy graduate
Ethan Nwaneri scored before the half-our mark to secure our PL title! Arseanal collapsed and lost to Brighton so we ended up winning the league by 6 points!