Crystal Palace produced a blunt performance in the Carabao Cup and crashed out to Colchester on penalties after Andros Townsend’s miss.
Palace fielded strong side and gave a senior debut to Sam Woods at right back in place of Joel Ward while Jairo Reidewald made a rare start at left back.
Victor Camarassa and James McCarthy also made their starting debuts for Palace in central midfield.
Conor Wickham started up front with a returning Christian Benteke and Wayne Hennessey started in goal in place of Vincente Guaita.
It was Benteke who came closest to breaking the deadlock in the first half, a good chance was saved well by Dean Gerken.
The Belgian was then played in after some good movement behind the back line, he chipped the ball well over Gerken, but the ball hit the bar and bounced the wrong side of the line.
The second half was evenly contested and Colchester produced a few good chances to win the game despite having little of the ball.
Jordan Ayew and Wilfreid zaha entered the action late on and looked to drive at the Colchester defence and produce the winning goal.
Despite a few late crosses and a tame penalty appeal after Benteke went down in the box, Palace were unable to find the winner and game headed straight to penalties.
Andros Townsend missed the first penalty for Palace which was well saved by Gerken but all other penalties were scored and Noah Chilvers held his nerve to win the shoot out for Colchester.
Man of the Match: Victor Camarasa – A solid debut for the Spaniard. He was always looking to get on the ball and make things tick for Palace. He started off a few good moves with passes from deeper positions which put Colchester under pressure. Getting a full 90 minutes was encouraging for Camarasa and hopefully he will feature more prominently to bring more creativity to the central midfield position.
Reaction: This was a poor outing from Palace and is representative of the home performances the fans have become used to over the past few seasons. We started slowly and the game continued in this fashion right up until the 90th minute when we decided to throw players forward in search of the winner. The quality of the team we fielded should have been attacking Colchester and putting them to the sword from the start. The languid, slow football under Hodgson can be so dry at times and leaves so many of us frustrated that we are not using the talents our players possess.