Crystal Palace fall agonisingly short of rare semi-final as Arsenal quality eventually tells
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League Cup semi-finals are rare specimens for Crystal Palace, their last having come in 2012. This, then, was a bruising defeat at the Emirates — a fine effort, but in the end Palace were edged out by the side with greater reserves. The Eagles were by no means outplayed for long periods in this 3-2 quarter-final defeat to Arsenal, but Mikel Arteta’s second-string players proved more than a match for a Premier League-strength Palace XI, thanks to Gabriel Jesus’s hat-trick.
Oliver Glasner’s side led as early as the fourth minute, when Jean-Philippe Mateta brushed off Jakub Kiwior to ensure goalkeeper Dean Henderson’s long punt up-field reached him. The Frenchman slotted home, the 6,000 fans in the away end dreaming. So much of the first 45 was played at plodding pace — Arsenal in possession but only of the ball, not of any threat going forward.
Palace, with their lead, were walked and talked through their every move of the game by Glasner, who pointed each pass where he wanted it to go before it had. And the Eagles pressed well in a five-man pack of Mateta, Eberechi Eze, Ismaila Sarr, Will Hughes and Jefferson Lerma when Arsenal were beginning to exert just a little too much control.
It took so long for that control to tell. That was partly thanks to a decent one-handed save over the bar by Henderson from Raheem Sterling’s sweetly-struck direct free-kick. Glasner had made just one change to his line-up from that which won so impressively away to rivals Brighton on Sunday, with the suspended Daniel Munoz making way for 18-year-old Caleb Kporha.
