2 weeks ago
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For Brentford, there was a measure of relief. It’s probably fair to say that the run of one win in nine games in which they went into this weekend was not representative of how they’d played but, still, it’s as well to stifle as early as possible any thought that they were going through a mid-winter slump similar to last season’s. Survival may not quite be mathematically assured but breaking the 30-point mark with 15 games remaining makes it almost certain they will be in the Premier League next season.
After a slow start, the game was rather better than the conditions. It was an afternoon of truly filthy weather, a raw morning yielding to heavy rain, a blustery breeze, and skies of unremitting grey. It was an afternoon to be grateful for modern drainage, the pitch remaining slick and green throughout. With Brentford in a blancmange pink and aubergine away kit that evoked the once-aspirational bathroom in a seedy bedsit in which terrible things have happened from an 80s crime drama, the overall effect was of almost artistic bleakness, a sort of Croydon Noir.
At the heart of all true noir is the sense of the world as an implacable bureaucratic machine that inevitably crushes all human endeavour. And so it was that the game turned on a five-minute period of VAR-based drama midway through the second half; while Palace fans booed, the decisions taken were all, ultimately, probably correct, even if they wouldn’t necessarily have been given in a pre-VAR age. It began with Marc Guéhi smacking a clearance into Will Hughes, who thrust up his hands to protect his face. Perhaps that would anyway have eventually been given as a penalty, but Maxence Lacroix then caught the shin of Nathan Collins as he jumped for the bouncing ball. The referee Tony Harrington gave the penalty, and the VAR official Darren England confirmed his decision.
Bryan Mbuemo’s kick, though, hit the post and, as Guéhi cleared, Palace seemed to have got away with it. A VAR check, though, showed that Guéhi had encroached before the kick was taken and so Mbuemo got another chance – the modern innovation of VAR and the 1937 innovation of the D at the top of the penalty area combining to undo Palace. (Whether Norwegian clubs will vote to abolish the D remains as yet unclear). The oddity is that, as no other player had touched the ball, Mbuemo wouldn’t have been able to play it again, and so Guéhi had no need to clear it. Second time around, Mbuemo let Dean Henderson dive to his right and dinked the penalty the other way.
One soon became two. With his high forehead, incipient widow’s peak, pallor and general air of jittery spindliness, there is something of the alchemist about Mikkel Damsgaard, forever on the verge of some earth-shattering discovery and yet never entirely sure he hasn’t attracted the unwanted attentions of the church authorities. He had been a frustrated figure in the first half, but with 10 minutes of the second remaining, his skittering magic on the right created room for a cross that Kevin Schade headed past Henderson.
Palace, who had been on a run of one defeat in 11 league games, are in a similar position to Brentford: almost certainly safe and not quite inventive enough to qualify for Europe. Jean-Philippe Mateta, back to his best after a post-Olympics slump, almost added his fifth in as many games early on as Eberechi Eze flicked on Will Hughes’s low pass, Mark Flekken making an excellent save, but the promise that implied was never delivered upon. Mateta worked the line well, holding the ball up on dangerous situations, but without ever being able to transform potential menace into anything more concrete. Everything of creative note that Palace did went through Eze and after he was tripped 12 minutes into the second half, his free-kick clipped Sepp van den Berg in the wall and was deflected against the base of the post.
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It was Eze, inevitably, who created their, his deep cross finding Daniel Muñoz, whose volleyed ball across goal was turned in by the 19-year-old substitute Romain Esse, making his debut after a £14.5m move from Millwall. That led to some late Palace pressure but other than a free-kick Eze pinged over, Brentford were secure enough. For them at least the clouds have parted.
