Soccer

Saturday Night Takeaway: West Brom big game improvement comes at wrong time for Man United

"And then you have four creative players, four you need to score a goal for you and they didn't. ...

Off The Ball

Soccer

Off The Ball

"And then you have four creative players, four you need to score a goal for you and they didn't. They had flashes, glimpses and moments, but they don't have consistency."

There are no prizes for guessing which part of the team was left to bear the brunt of Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho's frustrations.

Chasing a Top Four place, West Brom were always going to prove a tough nut to crack even at Old Trafford.

And so it proved. Missing the suspended Zlatan Ibrahmovic and injured Juan Mata and Paul Pogba, the most advanced quartet was made up of Henrik Mkhitaryan, Jesse Lingard, Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford.

Plenty of pace there but ultimately no goals in the 0-0 draw which keeps United fifth overall.

Managed by Tony Pulis, West Brom will always prove resolute and are the best outside the Top 7, sitting eight, a full eight points clear of ninth placed Stoke City.

Last time out they saw off a beleaguered Arsenal 3-1 at the Hawthorns and in following that up with a 0-0 draw at Old Trafford, West Brom have started to show results against the sides above them.

Previous to the Arsenal game, they had not beaten any members of the current Top 7 this season, with the only points picked up being a 1-1 draw against Tottenham.

Crystal Palace manager Sam Allardyce on the touchline during the Premier League match at Stamford Bridge, London. John Walton/PA Wire/PA Images

Rising Crystal Palace causes Chelsea procession to stumble

All three goals in Crystal Palace's surprise 2-1 win at Stamford Bridge all came within the first 11 minutes and has made things a little bit more interesting at both ends of the table.

It keeps Palace four points clear of the relegation zone as they finally find some answers under Big Sam Allardyce with their fourth win in succession, having sat in the drop zone as recently as late February.

But it breathes just about enough life into the Premier League title race. Coupled with the 2-0 win for Tottenham at Burnley, Chelsea's defeat sees their gap reduced to seven points with nine matches to go.

Mathematically it's still not over but one would still expect Chelsea to dust themselves off and get to the finish line in pole position.

But if the Blues were to lose to Manchester City on Wednesday and Tottenham were to come away from Swansea with a victory on the same night, then it's down to four points and from a neutral point of view it's what we'll want to see after Chelsea had seemingly quashed any sense of a race a couple of months ago.

Shakespeare continues to write the script for Leicester

A 2-0 win at home to Stoke means last season's surprise champions Leicester City have now climbed to within a place of 10th place and more importantly six away from the relegation zone.

Since Craig Shakespeare took the managerial reins, initially on a temporary basis, the Foxes have now won four Premier League matches in a row as well as reaching the Champions League quarter finals.

More significantly, today's win was their first clean sheet of that winning run in the league against a Stoke side which has not travelled well this season.