Crystal Palace vs Cardiff City: Wilfried Zaha’s Eagles fail to crack Neil Warnock’s wall of resistance

Cardiff City somehow left Selhurst Park with a point on Boxing Day after holding wasteful Crystal Palace to a goalless draw.

In one of the most one-sided games anyone will witness this season the Eagles did everything but score against a Bluebirds team who had come for the point and nothing else.

Roy Hodgson included Connor Wickham in in his squad; the striker hadn’t played a game at Selhurst Park for more than two years thanks to a ruptured ACL but was named on the bench in the place of the unfancied – and fully fit – Alexander Sorloth.

Neil Warnock, meanwhile, made five changes after the home drubbing by Old Gunnar Solskjaer’s Manchester United as he returned to the club he managed twice, most recently in late 2014, and received a warm reception from the home crowd.

Much was made before kick-off of the Premier League‘s first ever meeting between two managers in their 70s and with well over 2,000 career games between them but the opening exchanges were anything but old school, with Palace zipping it about cutely and looking to complete a fruitful festive period after two wins on the bounce over Leicester and Manchester City.

They nearly got off to the perfect start in the first minute when last week’s hero at City, Andros Townsend, rattled the bar off a beautiful flick pass from Wilfried Zaha following a flowing move. Palace’s Ivorian star was in confident mood, all tricks and flicks and applause from the crowd and he nearly opened the scoring as he cut in from the right and curled a left-footed shot just wide of Neil Etheridge’s goal.

Townsend – scorer of that goal of the season contender at the Etihad – and Luka Milivojevic – who hit a beauty from distance against Leicester a week ago – were both encouraged to shoot each time they picked up the ball outside the box but the latter’s effort 15 minutes in failed to test Etheridge.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka, arguably the most in-form right-back in the league, then drove forward and blazed a shot over with his weaker left-foot before Townsend tried again but also fired over as Palace completely dominated their hosts.

It took Cardiff until the 25th minute to manage an effort on goal but Junior Hoilett’s shot from distance was no trouble for Vicente Guaita, very much making himself at home in the Eagles goal after replacing Wayne Hennessey. Bobby Reid should have done better from a header 10 minutes later as Palace started to allow Cardiff to settle towards the end of the first half.

The home started the second half as they did the first and came close to opening the scoring again were it not for Sol Bamba’s excellent block in the box to deny Kouyate before Max Meyer curled over from the edge of the box. The Senegalese midfielder had an even better chance a few minutes later but volleyed over before Meyer blazed just over after being put through by Zaha as Palace continued to do everything but score.

The longer the game wore on the tenser the atmosphere got inside Selhurst Park. They’d seen this sort of game many times before and their side get nothing out of it and as the clock ticked into the final half hour supporters started calling for the famously conservative Hodgson to make a change.

He did just that as Wickham replaced the underwhelming Meyer for the final half hour and he could have had the perfect impact a minute later as he spun expertly in the box but fired wide from eight yards out and the shot count ticked into double figures.

As the clock wore down Cardiff’s time-wasting became less subtle and their challenges on Zaha got more robust, with Hoilett lucky to escape a second yellow for a nasty late foul on the Ivorian. Milivojevic then rattled the post with a free-kick and it really started to feel like it wasn’t going to be Palace’s day.

Guaita, a spectator for most of the game, then had to bail Mamadou Sakho out after a poor header in the box with a fine save from Hoilett to deny the away side an undeserved win.

Palace threw everything forward and Zaha raced clear in the final minutes and looked odds on to snatch it but Bruno Manga’s brilliant last-ditch tackle saved his side a precious point.

The final whistle came and perhaps the most damning statistic was that Palace had 31 shots on goal – more than three times as many as their visitors – but finished the match with just one more on target. In the end it was their wayward finishing that cost them two points.