Crystal Palace clawed back a stoppage time equaliser with ten men in the Europa League on Thursday, but their head coach spent longer fielding questions about who wasn't playing than who was, with Liverpool due at Selhurst Park this weekend.
Pierre Sage's side came from behind to draw 1-1 with Hoffenheim, a result that eased some of the pressure building around the Frenchman after three straight Premier League defeats. Yet the story coming out of Selhurst Park on Thursday night was not really about the football at all. It was about Axel Disasi, the on-loan Chelsea defender who had barely missed a minute of Palace's season, left out of the squad entirely with no explanation offered, and Sage's flat refusal to say why.
A point salvaged with ten men
Palace looked set for another miserable night when Alexander Prass put Hoffenheim ahead after seven minutes, slipping the ball underneath goalkeeper Dean Henderson, who will have wanted that one back. Henderson redeemed himself soon after, denying Andrej Kramaric from close range, and Yeremy Pino later went clean through only to be denied by Oliver Baumann at his near post.
The game turned further against Palace in the 77th minute when Adam Wharton was shown a second yellow card for catching Wouter Burger with an arm in an aerial challenge, reducing the home side to ten men for the second match running. Jean-Philippe Mateta had seen red in the defeat at Tottenham only days earlier, a sending off Palace are formally appealing, and Wharton's dismissal meant two different players dismissed in consecutive matches, hardly the discipline a struggling side needs when every point matters.
Somehow, Palace found an equaliser anyway. Pino's cross in stoppage time was nodded down by Tyrick Mitchell, and Daichi Kamada arrived to finish through Baumann's legs and spare Sage an even worse headline. It was the sort of late, scrappy goal that buys a manager a little breathing space rather than solving anything underneath it.
The question nobody at Selhurst Park would answer
What should have been the main talking point, a dramatic rescue act with a man down, was overtaken within minutes by Disasi's absence from the squad altogether. The France international had played every minute of Palace's Europa League campaign and started their previous two Premier League matches, making his non-appearance on the teamsheet, originally named before a late correction swapped him for Honest Ahanor, impossible to ignore.
Asked point-blank about it afterwards, Sage offered nothing. "It's an internal decision. I don't want to comment," he said, before being told that stonewalling the question risked making it look like he had lost control of his own dressing room. His response to that was just as brief: "That's your analysis." Reports in the aftermath suggested Disasi had arrived late for a team meeting, though that remains unconfirmed by the club, and Sage himself later indicated the defender would be available again for Sunday's visit of Liverpool, which suggests this was treated internally as a one match matter rather than anything more serious.
Even so, the refusal to explain a decision involving a key player, at a club already fighting fires on several fronts, was a strange way to handle it. Supporters who have watched their side slide towards the bottom of the table were left speculating rather than informed, and a manager under scrutiny chose a moment of genuine goodwill, a hard-fought home point, to create a fresh story he did not need.
Pressure that will not ease
The context makes all of this harder to shrug off. Palace sit 18th in the Premier League with seven points from nine games and a goal difference of minus 12, the worst in the entire division, worse even than the bottom placed club. Before Thursday's draw they had lost three Premier League matches in a row, including a chastening 5-0 defeat away at Brighton and that 2-0 loss at Tottenham in which Mateta was dismissed.
Sage arrived at Selhurst Park in the summer on a three-year contract, succeeding Oliver Glasner after an impressive spell at RC Lens, and few expected his name to be mentioned in connection with the sack this early into the job. Yet reports throughout October and into November have linked Palace with a list of possible successors should results not turn, among them Sean Dyche, Vitor Pereira, Kieran McKenna, Rob Edwards, Scott Parker and Thomas Frank, all floated as contingency options rather than confirmed targets. None of that speculation has come from the club itself, but its mere existence tells its own story about where Palace currently find themselves.
There is a sharper edge to it, too, given where Palace were only a few months ago. This is the same club that won the Conference League last season under Glasner, beating Rayo Vallecano in the final to lift their first ever European trophy, a result that earned them their place in this season's Europa League. The Thursday night drama at Selhurst Park was meant to be a continuation of that story. Instead it has become a weekly exercise in damage limitation, on and off the pitch.
Liverpool's visit on Sunday was always going to be a stern examination of a side with Palace's problems this season. Now it arrives with an unresolved subplot hanging over it, and a head coach who will know that another heavy defeat, regardless of what happened on a Thursday night in the Europa League, would make Thursday's unanswered question feel a great deal less trivial than he tried to suggest.
For now, Sage has his point, his available defender back for selection, and a club trying to look calmer than its recent results suggest. Whether that holds beyond Sunday is a different matter entirely.
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