Aston Villa 2-2 Crystal Palace: Eagles drop more points in thrilling Premier League draw | OneFootball

A brutal reminder for Oliver Glasner as season of struggle continues

One starts to wonder whether Crystal Palace really will be okay in the end.

Instead, Ross Barkley’s well-placed header earned Aston Villa a 2-2 draw and reminded Oliver Glasner and his players that those heady days are long ago now. Villa are too good a side to simply bow to a second half spent packed behind the ball. Points dropped again for Palace, still in the relegation zone.

The Eagles lost Michael Olise in the summer but also allowed Odsonne Edouard, Jordan Ayew and Jesurun Rak-Sakyi to depart, without then signing four new attacking players to replace them. The chickens come home to roost in games like this.

Villa could bring on the likes of Jhon Duran, Emi Buendia and Jaden Philogene. In Glasner’s reserves, by contrast, were the defensively minded Jefferson Lerma, Jeffrey Schlupp, Chris Richards and Nathaniel Clyne, plus a handful of academy players on which Palace’s hopes cannot fairly be hung. Squad depth remains a glaring issue.

It had all started so well for Palace, with November by now a quite unforgettable month for Justin Devenny.

After a Premier League debut on November 9 and his Northern Ireland senior debut on Monday, here came a bonus for the 21-year-old, who struck beautifully to put the Eagles ahead before the break with his first goal for the club.

Bright spark: Justin Devenny scored his first goal for the Eagles

Nick Potts/PA Wire

A second win at Villa Park in 24 days — the first in the Carabao Cup — would have done the Eagles the world of good. The first half saw a confident brand of football, Glasner sticking stubbornly to his much-maligned 3-4-2-1 formation and it paying off.

But injury-ravaged Palace started the day having scored fewer goals than everyone bar bottom-of-the-league Southampton, and perhaps inevitably they sank further and further back in the second-half drizzle, beckoning Villa onto them and eventually paying the price.

It must also be said that Cheick Doucoure struggled with the intensity of the match in only his second start of the season. Injuries have plagued his last 12 months, but while game time at Villa Park was no doubt valuable to him, he was noticeably off the pace.

If the result and the lack of options on the bench were the learnings, the points of encouragement were mostly to be found in the first half. Ismaila Sarr combined well with Jean-Philippe Mateta, most notably when Mateta played Sarr through and the Senegalese ran through confidently to net his first Palace goal, after only four minutes.

And Dean Henderson’s penalty save from Youri Tielemans ultimately made Devenny’s goal possible, the youngster netting just seconds after. It was an elastic save from one of the only Palace players performing at a similar level to last season.

Last month’s victory over Tottenham remains the Eagles’ only in the league this season. A golden chance for the second was squandered here.