Tactically, you have to look at the first ten minutes. Brighton lead Crystal Palace 3-0 by the 10th: an own goal from Jaydee Canvot in the 4th, Diego Gomez in the 7th, Yasin Ayari in the 10th. Ten minutes. On a Sunday at three o’clock, ten minutes in, our club delegate is still looking for the folder with the ID cards.
I watched Gomez’s goal three times. A lob from the halfway line. I’ll tell you straight away it wouldn’t work with us: on pitch 2, halfway is at the top of the slope, and the ball rolls back down towards our own goal by itself. A flat pitch away, mind you, it’s exactly what I asked my number 10 for in August. He told me he’d slept badly.
What interests me most is the left wing. Maxim De Cuyper played the whole match there. Ninety minutes in the same position, never coming off. My left back plays the first half on the left and the second behind the clubhouse bar, because he’s the one with the fridge keys. Team spirit is logistics too.
After the break, Charalompos Kostoulas made it four in the 49th, Jack Hinshelwood the fifth in the 84th. At 3-0 after ten minutes, I’d have saved my half-time talk for next week. No need to waste it. I’d have folded it up in my towel.
Freddy, you’ve been keeping that half-time talk since 2019. It still has the old price of a cone of chips on it.
She’s not wrong, but it’s a good talk. The level in the third provincial division (Belgium’s Sunday amateur leagues) has gone way up, people don’t realise: we rarely concede three goals in ten minutes. To be fair, it often takes us ten minutes to get to eleven.
Crystal Palace, for their part, have conceded 17 goals in seven games, the most in the league, and sit 14th with seven points. Next match: Newcastle the following Sunday, three days after an away trip to Besiktas in the Europa League. Three days between two matches. With us, three days is how long the shirts take to dry.
It’s true, we checked: DH Les Sports+.
