Palace weren’t able to repeat last seasons heroics and sent Chelsea back across London with nothing with the league leaders maintaining an unbeaten start to the season with a win at Selhurst Park.
A late goal wasn’t anything more than a consolation as both ourselves and Chelsea ended with 10-men apiece in the 2-1 defeat on Saturday afternoon….
Fraizer Campbell, in good form of late, will feel that he could have scored at least once before Chelsea’s early goal but he was denied once by the returning Chelsea ‘keeper Thibaut Courtois and then defender Cesar Azpilicueta.
Chelsea then took the lead; Oscar (6) superbly curled home a freekick beyond Julian Speroni and into the top corner to make it one-nil to Chelsea, with those missed chances proving costly.
Another chance, and another too Campbell, passed us by soon after the Oscar goal when he got in following a mistake from Gary Cahill but his effort was lobbed onto the roof of the net as we put Chelsea under pressure, not allowing them to settle.
The chances of getting an equaliser, at least, would have risen when Chelsea had Azpilicueta sent off for a lunging challenge on Mile Jedinak. With Campbell and Cesc Fabregas squaring up to each other as the defender left the pitch both could easily have gone but were issued only yellow cards.
Minutes after the Chelsea red card we evened things up with Damien Delaney, already booked for an early pull back on Loic Remy did the same again to earn his second yellow just before the break to make it 10 against 10.
Having lost that man advantage Chelsea then took the sting out of the game when Fabregas (51) swapped passes with Eden Hazard and Oscar to work his way into the area and then finish beyond Speroni.
Nothing more than what could be viewed as half chances for each side came before a last minute goals from Campbell (90) set up a potential nervy injury-time period for Chelsea when he finally got the goal he had worked for as he finished from a Wilfried Zaha cross.
An equaliser wasn’t to come though.
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