Crystal Palace had to play against the Premier League table toppers Chelsea on October 18 at the Selhurst Park which is the home turf of Palace. The match was intense as 2 players received red cards and a late goal from Fraizer Campbell turned the last few minutes of the match into a dramatic finale.
Oscar and Cesc Fabregas gave Chelsea the lead in the first half with the former Barcelona player scoring his first goal with the jersey of Chelsea and Loic Remy made his first league start for Chelsea as he replaced Diego Costa who was suffering from a hamstring injury.
The match started to get heated up in the final stages of the first half when Azpilicueta received a straight red card after tackling Mile Jedinak and forced Chelsea to play with 10 men on the pitch but only 3 minutes later and a player from Crystal Palace also received a red card as the Irish defender Damien Delaney was sent off of the pitch with a 2nd yellow card after challenging Willian.
The goals from Oscar and Fabregas kept the game in favor of Chelsea as they weren’t in need of attacking too much and risking their defensive side on conceding any unnecessary goals. Fraizer Campbell did manage to score a goal at the 90th minute but that was all that the home team managed to do.
When the match reached its end and Chelsea claimed the victory, the manager of Crystal Palace critiqued the decisions of the referee as Neil Warnock believes that the players of Chelsea influenced in the red card that was shown to Damien Delaney and if it hadn’t been for the red card, Crystal Palace could have managed to claim the triumph.
Neil Warnock said: “The one thing I’ve not missed when I’ve been doing media work is refereeing performances like that. I thought he was influenced today. He had four Chelsea players around him. You cannot take anything away from our lot because we played some good stuff. We could have scored two or three in the first 40 minutes and that would have been a different game’’