Ipswich player names three Crystal Palace stars who were ‘not easy’ to deal with during 1-0 defeat

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Tuesday night saw a third clean sheet for Crystal Palace during the 1-0 victory over a scrappy Ipswich Town side.

Jean-Philippe Mateta was the star of the show for Crystal Palace, scoring his fourth Premier League goal of the season.

Mateta’s goal was a special one as he ran through on goal before using skill to get by Jacob Greaves and then chipping Arijanet Muric thanks to Dean Henderson’s advice.

Position	Team	Played MP	Won W	Drawn D	Lost L	For GF	Against GA	Diff GD	Points Pts
16	Crystal PalaceCrystal Palace	14	2	6	6	12	18	-6	12

The result puts Crystal Palace into 16th place ahead of Wednesday’s round of games. With Oliver Glasner surely confident the season is turning around amid a run of three games unbeaten.

Despite Mateta stealing the headlines, it was the defence which ultimately won the points with a third clean sheet – following the game it is the back-line which got all the praise from one Ipswich player.

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Sam Morsy full of praise for Crystal Palace trio

Following the loss for Ipswich, their captain has been speaking to the press about how tough Crystal Palace were to play against.

As quoted by the East Anglian Daily Times, Sam Morsy explained that the back-line of Crystal Palace is hard to break down, with the back three of Marc Guehi, Maxence Lacroix and Trevoh Chalobah, in particular being singled out for praise.

“They’re not an easy team to create clear chances against. Newcastle have a top, top forward line and they didn’t have a shot against them on Saturday.

“With the back five they have in place now they’re going to be hard to break down. Guehi, Lacroix, Chalobah – that’s a really physical, dominant one-vs-one back line. When they match you up, as they did, and go man-for-man it’s not easy to create chances against them. I think lots of teams will find that difficult.

“We couldn’t get superiority in any individual duels. We got into some good areas, but we weren’t able to produce the quality that we needed to create a clear chance. Both teams probably cancelled each other out a little bit in terms of the systems.”

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Oliver Glasner’s defence is better than Pep Guardiola’s

This season would have been going a lot worse without the defence being as strong as it has been throughout 2024/25. Captain Guehi would have been concerned with losing Joachim Andersen although Lacroix has proved an incredible replacement with Chalobah also impressing.

In fact, the Eagles have even conceded fewer goals than Manchester City with 18, while Pep Guardiola’s side have conceded 19 – Saturday’s opponent who are in awful form.

All three, along with Dean Henderson, have been impressive this season with the defence being the big strength for the Eagles during a disappointing campaign.

If Glasner can keep getting his side among the goals and in attacking positions, the defence should mean a lot of points are picked up.