For most of this breathless encounter, Bournemouth supporters were relishing the prospect of going top of the Premier League, albeit perhaps for only a few hours, and inflicting Crystal Palace\u2019s second home defeat of 2025. Andoni Iraola\u2019s impressive side had led through two goals from the teenager Eli Junior Kroupi before being pegged back by Jean-Philippe Mateta and thought they had won it when the substitute Ryan Christie scored with two minutes of normal time remaining.<\/p>\n
Mateta, who scored on his first start for France in midweek, had other ideas as he converted an injury-time penalty to complete his hat-trick, although he missed a golden opportunity to win it at the death.<\/p>\n
Defeat would still have been harsh on Bournemouth<\/a> and Iraola embraced his opposite number, Oliver Glasner, at the final whistle in recognition of what must rank as one of the games of the season even at this early stage. Much of the attention beforehand had focused on the men in the dugouts, with both out of contract next summer and coveted by clubs with much bigger budgets.<\/p>\n The Bournemouth owner, Bill Foley, is due to travel to the UK this month to continue discussions with the Spaniard that will surely be even more of a priority given their incredible start to the campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we get good results, we do a good season, then we will talk to the club and we will decide what to do next season,\u201d said Iraola, who felt aggrieved that the video assistant referee did not intervene when the late penalty was given against Bafod\u00e9 Diakit\u00e9, having been overruled by the referee earlier in the match. \u201cI am upset and I am angry because of their goal in the 96th-minute, I cannot accept it. Not to win it because someone called a penalty and I think the VAR was influenced by the previous decision. That is the only explanation I can find.\u201d<\/p>\n Glasner, who said this week he has opened talks over a new contract but offered no assurances he will commit his future to Palace, did not agree. But this stirring comeback again illustrated the team spirit their Austrian has fostered. \u201cWe have created this in the team and in the stands, that\u2019s why we were able to come back. It shows the character of this group,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Eli Junior Kroupi puts Bournemouth 2-0 up against Crystal Palace. Photograph: Richard Pelham\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The speed with which Bournemouth\u2019s front four pressed from the first whistle unsettled their opponents and it was from an early corner that Kroupi, starting his second league game since arriving from Bournemouth\u2019s sister club Lorient in the summer, due to a calf injury to Evanilson, was able to head home at the back post. \u201cWe\u2019re top of the league,\u201d sang the travelling supporters, probably in slight disbelief.<\/p>\n Antoine Semenyo was a constant menace as he forced Dean Henderson into a full-stretch save. An immaculate piece of control in his own half was the spark for Bournemouth\u2019s second, with Chris Richards left for dead as he sped down the left flank and delivered a low cross. Marc Gu\u00e9hi, who Glasner confirmed this week will leave on a free transfer next summer, could only divert it straight to Kroupi and Henderson was unable to prevent his volley from going over the line. It needed a good save from Djordje Petrovic to deny Mateta just before the break but there was no argument that Bournemouth deserved their 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Palace began the second half with much more intent but a moment of controversy five minutes in hinted that it might not be their afternoon. Isma\u00efla Sarr was clean through when he was brought down by Marcos Senesi, although the referee, Jarred Gillett, decided that only warranted a yellow card as he felt the Senegal forward was heading away from goal. After much deliberation from the video assistant referee, the original decision was not reviewed. But Palace\u2019s fortunes suddenly changed when the Mateta\u2019s goal from Daniel Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s cross was initially ruled out for offside before that decision was quickly overturned. Within five minutes, Mateta had his second when he somehow turned the ball in from a tight angle after Petrovic had saved from Mu\u00f1oz.<\/p>\n Senesi escaped again when he appeared to shove Sarr over when he was bearing down on goal. Eddie Nketiah had the ball into the net and this time it was correctly disallowed for offside, then Christie rammed home from close range after a quick break, seeming to have won it for Bournemouth. But Mateta ensured that honours ended even when, to Iraola\u2019s disgust, Diakit\u00e9 was ruled to have fouled Gu\u00e9hi in stoppage time and the striker kept his cool from the spot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most of this breathless encounter, Bournemouth supporters were relishing the prospect of going top of the Premier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-222802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}