Matic wonder strike seals comeback win for Manchester United against Palace

Match Review: Crystal Palace 2-3 Manchester United

The crowd at Selhurst Park were up for it, completely contrasting to how Manchester United were.  Crystal Palace started the game the better. They were direct and played with pace and power.

Feeding the ball up to the 6’2″ Christian Benteke and 6’3″ Alexander Sorloth, Palace looked a real threat. They were picking up the second balls really well. When they dropped, Townsend, Schlupp and Van Aanholt were quickest to react.

Andros Townsend put Crystal Palace in front as his deflected effort curled away from a stranded De Gea. This naturally got the crowd up and South East London was rocking.

Despite this David De Gea didn’t have too many more saves to make as Roy Hodgson’s men went for crosses into the box. Chris Smalling dealt with them better than his centre-half partner, Victor Lindelof.

Manchester United then had their chance to come into the match and take control after weathering the Palace storm for 15 minutes. However, they didn’t even get going. Constantly giving the ball away and surrendering possession, United couldn’t sustain anything.

Sanchez, Pogba and Young provided just a snapshot of United’s performance in that first half. The trio gave the ball away on numerous occasions with the Chilean ending the match with 71.2% pass accuracy.

Scott McTominay was the one casualty for the horror of a first-half display. Mourinho brought on Marcus Rashford along with his no doubt firey half-time team talk to spark the team into life.

But then the situation went from bad to worse as a quick free-kick from Jeffrey Schlupp set Van Aanholt away to cooly finish past De Gea for 2-0.

Chris Smalling headed in to cut the deficit to just one and Mourinho changed again. Although Rashford had brought some fluidity into the attack the Portuguese man wasn’t happy. On came Juan Mata and Luke Shaw for Antonio Valencia and Ashley Young.

It’s fair to say the substitutions changed the game. With more width in United’s play creating space for others inside, you felt Palace were tiring and the tide was turning. United had Palace pinned in their own third of the pitch, camped on the edge of their box.

It was only a matter of time before the Red Devils got back level. Romelu Lukaku patiently waited for the gap to squeeze home a fine finish. And then queue last-minute scenes as Nemanja Matic struck an audacious dipping volley past the stretched Wayne Hennesey.

The players submerged into the travelling fans as Matic took one for the team in getting a yellow card for his celebrations. But for Jose Mourinho’s men, that’s two comebacks in two games and the first real trademark Manchester United comeback for some time.