2018/2019 Crystal Palace ~ Seasonal Recap 3rd
Europa League: Round of 32
FA Cup: Round 3
League Cup: Winners
Recap: It's funny how one season raising expectations can lead to a wildly different viewpoint of how the following season is perceived. A year ago, all of Lucien LeClair's efforts were devoted to the Premier League with minor dedication to the other league cups. Going from 14th to 6th was an outstanding achievement and got LeClair widespread praise for leading Crystal Palace to a Europa League position. Now, some would argue that despite winning the League Cup, he faltered in Europa League by being arguably the 2nd best team in English football and falling to a below-top-tier French side in Marseille, as well as bottling a chance at the title that Tottenham also squandered. Still, there are those defending LeClair in the media stating that it's not like Palace would be anywhere close to these feats without LeClair. You can't want him out and tear him to shreds because of mistakes he made in his 2nd season of managing. By all normal metrics, this was a phenomenal season for Crystal Palace that will go down in the history books. Appreciate that, and know that even for LeClair this is far from the peak which he hopes to achieve.
League Cup: Last season, Crystal Palace exited the Carabao Cup in Round #3 with an exit to Chelsea in a match that wasn't much of a contest. This season, they played Gillingham in Round #2 and survived against them in extra time, and then they went right back in Round #3 and played Brentford and won 3-1 which meant they advanced to the Round of 16. By comparison, United this year had to play Chelsea in Round #3 and lost, so that should give you a bit of perspective on who they had to face. In the Round of 16, Palace survived a contest against bottom of the Championship Blackburn Rovers, 3-2 and then they had to face the big boys. Chelsea in the Quarter-Finals was far from an easy matchup, yet they won 2-0. Then in the Semi-Finals they had to face by far the toughest club remaining in Liverpool, they lost the opening leg 1-2 but fought back thanks to a Christian Benteke hat-trick in the 2nd leg along with a late winner to win 3-1. In the Final, they took down Watford to win their first ever real piece of silverware with Lucien LeClair at the helm. It's not exactly the Premier League or Champions League title, but it's pretty damn swanky to say this is Crystal Palace's first legitimate piece of silverware since... 1991? Yeah, pretty nice indeed.
FA Cup: A year ago, Crystal Palace saw themselves fly all the way to the Quarter-Finals before befalling to the hands of Manchester United. Truthfully, it's not the worst way to go out considering United won the league title and FA Cup that season as well as finishing Runner-Ups in the Champions League Final. How did the tournament go this year for Crystal Palace? They quite simply didn't make it a priority. In the first round they played which was Round #3, they got defeated by Arsenal who were playing at home by a scoreline of 2-1. We just didn't make the tournament much of a priority considering at the time we were still in the League Cup, had Europa League to deal with, and were amongst the tops of the whole Premier League. Arsenal at the time were also struggling greatly so while there was a slight chance we could advance based on that, it just didn't happen. If it's any consolation, Arsenal lost in the very next round to Manchester United so it was doubtful we woulda made it very far anyway. In the FA Cup Final is Manchester United and Spurs, but we'll cover the winner of that one in a bit.
Europa League: Easily the tournament that leaves Lucien LeClair the most tortured and heart-broken. LeClair went in to all of this expecting this to be his clubs first big splash on an international stage. Hell, the board demanded a SEMI-FINALS appearance from LeClair. That's asking for a lot considering the competition, but the board believed so devoutly in the talent he had brought in that it was feasible. Crystal Palace ended up in Group A, where they had to face FC Basel, FC Krasnodar, and Aalborg BK. Not the easiest group, but it certainly wasn't like there was a giant we couldn't compete with. We opened up with a big win vs Basel in front of our home fans, and then blew it a bit with a draw to Aalborg, and a loss to FC Krasnodar. Thankfully we bounced back by thrashing Aalborg BK 4-0 in our how match, and also defeating FC Basel in a nail-biter in Switzerland to clinch our advancements to the Knockout Stage. We could not the best of them in Match #6 and thus finished Runners-Up in the group, a result that would prove costly since they got to play Feyenoord while we had to play Marseille. In the opening home leg vs Marseille, we were CLEARLY not aggessive enough and it finished a 0-0 draw, we needed at least on goal, and we didn't get it. In the 2nd leg in France, Marseille played yet another defensive match but they got a goal off of a penalty and that was that. We were out of the Europa League before things really got exciting. Damn. Something to build on for next year but... oh wait... we didn't make the Europa League!
Premier League: Because we ended up finishing 3rd in the Premier League which means we qualify for the Champions League! Yeah, so right away you look at a club jumping from 6th in the league a year ago to 3rd you'd say that's some pretty damn solid improvement. Inevitably, there will be the claims that we blew it by getting those back-to-back draws vs Arsenal and Stoke City at the end as well as that away loss to Liverpool, but what can you do? Those are all respectable sides. We got the 3 points against Aston Villa, Swansea City, and Wolverhampton. Chelsea just got on a ridiculous hot-streak that neither us or Spurs could keep pace with. They didn't lose a match in the Premier League from April 2nd and onwards. They beat everybody else the rest of the way. I think it's fair to wonder if we could have done a little bit better, but even switching that Stoke City result wouldn't have been enough. If you wanna blame anybody, blame Spurs. They were on top for basically the ENTIRE season and then they stumbled at the end and pathetically finished in 4th place, behind even us! At the end of the day, Crystal Palace tie(and arguably surpass) their best ever finish in the top flight of English Football. You could even argue we're second since we finished with the same number of points as Manchester United. We give props to Chelsea for their ridiculous run, while also acknowledging we got here in this sort of level of contention one year earlier than we expected. Now next season? We're gonna be gunning for this title HARD.
Crystal Palace 2018/2019 Matches: