Palace amazing away stat may explain Irons defeat

I had a fascinating stat brought to my attention earlier this afternoon which may go quite a way to explaining our defeat by Palace on Saturday.

And it demonstrates that the team have developed a style of playing on their travels which brings highly unexpected results.

So far this season Roy Hodgson’s team has beaten Manchester United away and made it two for the season against us at the London Stadium.

But take a look at their record in 2018/19 and you find a team behind only Manchester City and Liverpool in terms of wining away from home.

In total they managed 11 on the road with City grabbing 17 and Liverpool 14.

On top of that is another stat which I’m assured made them the highest scorers from set pieces in the same season.

I’ve certainly not seen enough of the Eagles – nor to be honest would I want to – to offer any explanation for their extraordinary success on the road.

But old Roy has certainly found a way for his teams to make life difficult for home teams – ourselves being the latest to feel his sting.

We obviously – and that includes all of us perhaps – failed to do our homework on the team who took more than a few sides by surprise last season.

It may not represent the full story of  how we came to lose at home on Saturday but it certainly puts us in good company when you realise they beat Man City at the Etihad, Arsenal at the Emirates and Leicester City on their own manor last year.

Here’s the full list of victims: Fulham, Swansea, Huddersfield, West Brom, Man City, Wolves, Leicester, Burnley, Newcastle, Arsenal and Cardiff City.

We forgot in the year of 2019 Palace are the 3^rd best away team in the league (behind Liverpool/Man City) and that they are the highest scorers from set pieces.