Odsonne Edouard’s two-goal performance during Crystal Palace’s 3-2 Premier League win over Wolverhampton Wanderers even earned the striker praise from visiting boss Gary O’Neil.
A few weeks ago, if you’d told Crystal Palace supporters that they would be going into the new season with only Odsonne Edouard and Jean-Philippe Mateta as their striking options, they would have been forgiven for concluding that mid-table mediocrity was about the limit of The Eagles’ ambitions.
But as Mateta and Edouard combined brilliantly to fire Palace up to seventh place – the former grabbing his second assist of the day to set up the latter’s second goal of the day – Palace’s oft-maligned centre-forwards offered a timely reminder as to why they arrived at Selhurst Park to such lofty expectations in the first place.
Mateta was outstanding in the Bundesliga at Mainz. Edouard, meanwhile, took on a talismanic presence north of the border at Celtic; his most brilliant brace against Wolves rolling back the years in arguably the Frenchman’s finest Palace display since that debut against Tottenham back in 2021.
Odsonne Edouard fires Crystal Palace past Wolves
“Edouard gave us some issues once we lost the ball in those dangerous areas,” sighs O’Neil; the Wolves boss singling out a striker who has nearly matched last season’s tally of five by the first week of September.
“I felt we had really good control of it for large parts. Palace took advantage of a couple of our errors with the ball and a couple of technical breakdowns.
“We’re very disappointed with the goals and the chances we gave up. Because not at any time did Palace manage to cut us open. We created our own problems with the turnover of the ball when we shouldn’t.
Palace boss Roy Hodgson may disagree with that particular assessment. The nature of Palace’s third goal – Edouard and Mateta exchanging passes brilliantly on the edge of the box – would not have looked out of place at Highbury in Arsene Wenger’s heyday; Edouard in the Henry mould and Mateta channelling his inner-Dennis Bergkamp.
“He’s very technical,” Hodgson says of Edouard, via Sky Sports. “When one talks about good old-fashioned centre-forwards, one thinks about people who are very strong and hold the ball up well, bully centre-halves a little bit and win a lot of headers.
“That’s not the way he is. He’s got very clever movement and great technical ability.
“What we’re getting from him is a little bit of that old-fashioned stuff as well because we need that for the focus of our attacking play. He‘s been very good since the start of the season. And I was delighted for him he had those two goals today.”
Receive exclusive football transfer news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
