Is Chelsea FC the new Liverpool (i.e. beat the top teams, lose to the bottom feeders)? Well, they certainly put down a significant building block towards establishing that kind of resume today by not just dropping points but actually losing to lowly Crystal Palace. This isn’t just the first win for Palace, it’s their first goal and first points, and amazing it came against the reigning league champions.
The Eagles came into this one with a mind-blowing and historically bad 0-17 goal differential on the season. The London side had played seven matches and lost all seven. They emerged with all three points, now just one point behind AFC Bournemouth for climbing out of the basement.
It was fitting, given how their season has gone, the first Crystal Palace scoring of 2017-18 came from an own goal.
Palace’s Yohan Cabaye blocked a Chelsea clearance that then deflected off Blues defender Cesar Azpilicueta, and found the back of the net in the 11’.
Watch it here below:
Crystal Palace's first goal of the season in their 8th game of #PL campaign. An own goal from Cesar Azpilicueta pic.twitter.com/PR436aVcKq
— Joe Prince-Wright (@JPW_NBCSports) October 14, 2017
Tiemoue Bakayoko equalized for Chelsea just seven minutes later on a header from a Cesc Fabregas corner in the 18’.
The hero of the day was Wilfried Zaha though, who came back from an injury to put Crystal Palace back in front to stay at the end of the first-half. Overall, it was a massive upset, and it has the football world buzzing as Crystal Palace is the number one trending term on Twitter right now.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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