60 2GM Tuesday July 21 2020 | the times
SportPremier League
Brighton & Hove Albion needed a point
to be absolutely certain of staying up
but it would be pushing the boundaries
of credulity to state that this draw truly
mattered enough to excuse its overall
lack of entertainment.
Well before the final whistle thoughts
turned to who each team faced next
and whether it could be as gruelling a
watch as this turned out to be. Newcas-
tle United could end the season with a
Wolves up to sixth
after Podence
opens his account
in two minutes of the restart, the Palace
front man capitalised on a wayward
pass from Willy Boly, playing in Jeffrey
Schlupp who dragged his shot wide.
Palace had been the far brighter side,
and to go into the break with the lead
would have been deserved. To find
themselves behind was a bitter blow,
but it was a thing of a beauty that broke
them down. Palace had done well to
suffocate the influential João Moutin-
ho but when the Portuguese midfielder
picked up the ball on the edge of the
area and spotted Matt Doherty’s dart-
ing run, a clipped pass fell perfectly into
his path. Doherty squared first time and
Podence nodded into an empty goal.
Nuno beamed. “Talent, talent, but
talent only comes after the organisa-
tion, after you are organised and com-
pact,” he said.
Ominously for Palace, the majority
of goals that Wolves have scored this
season have come in the second half.
They looked to continue the trend by
exploiting the inexperience of Mitchell.
Traoré picked up the ball on the
byline and, despite James McArthur’s
support, the unstoppable force pushed
the ball between Mitchell’s legs and
bulldozed his way though. Traoré’s
cross found Jonny, who shifted to his
left at the far post and lost Joel Ward
with a full 360-degree rotation before
firing past Vicente Guaita.
Palace came closest to a consolation
through Zaha late on, but he was denied
by a diving Boly. Hodgson’s side will
have to stop José Mourinho’s Totten-
ham — Wolves’s rivals for the Europa
League spot — on Sunday if they are to
prevent the losing run reaching eight
games. “We will have to try and pick
ourselves up,” Hodgson said, “dust our-
selves down, freshen up tired legs, and
play another one of the top teams.”0
2Tom Roddy
1
Wo l ve s
Podence 41, Jonny 68Crystal Palace
2
0
clearly, been to reach the Champions
League — still a possibility if they can
win the Europa League next month —
but their charge was ended by just one
win in four games before this.
If form were the measuring stick for
concern, Hodgson would have had
more reason to worry. The veteran
manager is on his worst run in the
Premier League, and his team have fail-
ed to score in six of the seven straight
losses. “It’s a really bad spell — the cor-
onavirus and lockdown has not done
any good,” Hodgson, 72, said. “We kept
going. We have to keep picking
ourselves off the floor. The players are
finding it hard. They have to recover.”
Motivation, Hodgson insisted, had
not been the problem for his side.A combination of little and large was
enough to help Wolverhampton
Wanderers reclaim their hold on a
European place and inflict further pain
on Crystal Palace.
Daniel Podence, the diminutive
forward who stands at 5ft 5in, has
emerged as the latest Portuguese talent
in Nuno Espírito Santo’s side. His best
performance since signing from Olym-
piacos in January was capped off with
his first goal in gold, sending Wolves
back up to sixth in the Premier League.
Nuno’s more muscular frontman,
Adama Traoré, confirmed victory with
his 13th assist of the season, wrestling
between two players to set up Jonny
and leave Roy Hodgson’s team facing
their seventh straight defeat.
It was a crucial win for the West Mid-
lands side whose season began here a
year ago on Saturday in the Europa
League and will most likely end there
now. Wolves, who play away to Chelsea
on Sunday in their final league game,
can now finish no lower than seventh.
Beat Frank Lampard’s side and they
will seal sixth and guarantee European
football.
For a man who continually talks of
improvement and progression, there is
no sign as clear. “It pleases me a lot and
the credit is all for the players,” Nuno
said. “It has been a long season, one
calendar year, every day was working
and trying to become better and it was
a fair reward for us to more points than
last season.”
Nuno had spoken emotionally this
week of the impact coronavirus has had
on him personally, as he has been
unable to see his wife and three child-
ren for more than ten weeks because
they are staying in Porto. Yet there is a
family feel to what he has been building
at Molineux. Both goals, as is normal,
were met with the group of coaching
staff embracing each other in a huddle.
Their aim this season had, quite
Carroll ‘beating himself up’ as miss allows Brighton
headline-grabbing flourish should they
defeat Liverpool, the champions, and
Brighton will find Burnley tough given
their fine run of form towards possible
European qualification.
On the other hand, it would be churl-
ish to withhold congratulations as both
clubs were touted as relegation candi-
dates at the start of the season and if
Brighton defeat Burnley, they would
record their highest Premier League
points tally.
Graham Potter has engineered
another season for the club in the top
flight while fine-tuning various styles of
play and Steve Bruce has had to handle
the backlash in replacing the beloved
Rafael Benítez and the uncertainty
over a takeover.There were two disap-
pointments to deal with
on the south coast even
before a ball was kicked.
Many Newcastle fans had
expected that Kelland
Watts would start given
that this was a game ripe
for experimentation.
Watts, 20, came through
the Newcastle academy
and has been on loan at
Stevenage, his recall
having been approved by
the Premier League, butWatts never even came off the bench
for what would have been his debut.
The second blow was that Bruce opt-
ed not to play Andy Carroll in defence.
This was not quite as ludicrous as it
might seem given that defenders Flo-
rian Lejeune, Fabian Schär, Jamaal
Lascelles and Ciaran Clark were
all unavailable through injury
and that the frequently in-
jured but imposing striker
had recovered from a
hamstring injury and
played a bit part at the
back early in his career.
Indeed, Bruce has had a
plethora of injury concerns since
the restart but Allan Saint-Maxi-
min, the winger who has outshonethe stats of David Ginola to become the
leading exponent of dribbles in one
season of the Premier League by a
Frenchman, was able to start in spite of
being one of many doubts for Newcas-
tle.
The inclusion of Saint-Maximin is
usually a boon as he adds a layer of aes-
thetic intensity to most games but at
the Amex Stadium last night he played
more centrally than normal, behind
Dwight Gayle, and the position did not
really suit him. It was when he drifted
wide that he occasionally caused Brigh-
ton problems.
There was a pleasant surprise in that
both teams were full of energy, briefly,
from the off as if relegation was still on
the cards for both of them.0
2Alyson Rudd
1
Brighton
Newcastle
0
0
Carroll headed wide from
a Ritchie corner after
coming on as a substituteWolverhampton Wanderers (3-4-3): R Patrício 6
— L Dendoncker 6, C Coady 7, W Boly 5 —
M Doherty 7, J Moutinho 7, R Neves 6, J Otto 7 —
A Traoré 8 (P Neto 81min), R Jiménez 6,
D Podence 8 (D Jota 72). Booked Coady, Traoré.
Crystal Palace (4-3-3): V Guaita 6 — J Ward 6,
S Dann 6, M Sakho 6 (C Kouyaté 22, 6),
T Mitchell 6 — J Schlupp 6 (J Riedewald 73),
J McArthur 6, J McCarthy 6 — A Townsend 6,
J Ayew 5, W Zaha 6. Booked McCarthy.
Referee P Bankes.Instead, injuries had impacted Palace’s
form and influenced Hodgson’s line-up.
Owing to the long list of sidelined
defenders, Tyrick Mitchell, 20, was
handed a Premier League debut as well
as the biggest challenge of any man in
red and blue stripes.
Mitchell was up against Traoré, who
drove past him twice in the opening 45
minutes, in the second case teeing up
Podence for an acrobatic effort.
The experienced Mamadou Sakho
offered support to Mitchell, yet limped
off after 22 minutes with a muscle
strain. “It’s a Groundhog Day situation
for us,” Hodgson said.
The midfielder Cheikhou Kouyaté
replaced Sakho during the drinks
break, which Hodgson spent gesticu-
lating to the lively Wilfried Zaha. With- Podence, making his third successive start, celebrates his first goal for the club,Route to the Europa League
If Chelsea beat Arsenal in the FA
Cup final next month, then the
teams finishing in fifth to seventh
place in the Premier League will
qualify for the Europa League. That
is because Manchester City won the
League Cup but have already
qualified for the Champions League.
But if Arsenal win at Wembley and
finish seventh or lower, then they
and only the clubs in fifth and sixth
will progress to the Europa League.How they stand
PW D L F A Pts
Liverpool (c)............ 3630 3 3 77 29 93
Man City.....................36 24 3 9 93 35 75
Chelsea.......................36 19 6 11 64 49 63
Leicester.....................37 18 8 11 67 39 62
Man United............... 3617 11 8 63 35 62
Wolves......................... 37 15 14 8 51 38 59
Tottenham ................37 16 10 11 60 46 58
Sheffield Utd............37 14 12 11 38 36 54
Burnley........................ 37 15 9 13 42 48 54
Arsenal........................ 36 13 14 9 53 45 53
Everton........................ 37 13 10 14 43 53 49
Southampton..........37 14 7 16 48 59 49
Newcastle.................. 37 11 11 15 37 55 44
Crystal Palace......... 37 11 9 17 30 49 42
Brighton...................... 37 8 1415 37 53 38
West Ham..................36 10 7 19 47 60 37
Watford....................... 36 8 10 18 34 57 34
Aston Villa................. 36 8 7 21 39 66 31
Bournemouth.......... 37 8 7 22 37 64 31
Norwich (r)............... 37 5 6 26 26 70 210
Wolves are the only team
yet to have an English
goalscorer in the Premier
League this season
(excluding own goals)