Wolves 1 Crystal Palace 3

When I look back over the season, Gary has got his tactics right more often that not.

But in recent weeks I’ve been scratching my head a bit.

João Gomes was one of few to emerge with credit

For a start, I can’t get my head around this weird hybrid back three with full backs being used on the outside when Santi Bueno is sat on the bench.

If this was making us more defensively secure or giving us added thrust moving forward I’d make my peace with it, but we’re conceding goals for fun and looking short in attack.

Would it not be better to play with a specialist centre half? Or even go to a back four and get that extra attacking player into the game from the start?

We kept the ball well for the first 10-15 minutes yesterday but as soon as we got a little bit loose, Palace had a feeding frenzy.

Eze was unusually wasteful with two glaring misses before Olise was allowed to come in on that left foot to plunder the first and open us up for the second.

The brief moments we looked like making it a meaningful contest in the second half were after the changes arrived and the team committed a few extra bodies forward. That’s really what it should have been from the start.

Nobody summed up the performance more than Matheus Cunha. When we were playing passively, he was dropping deep to get involved, losing the ball and creating more trouble for his own team than Palace.

When we finally played with more adventure, he scored the goal, put a glorious cross over for Hwang and came within a few centimetres of winning a penalty.

Palace are in a fine moment and may well have beaten us just as comprehensively in any configuration, but the point I’m making is if you can’t defend, you might as well attack with some purpose.

I hope that’s the approach we take at Anfield next week and can sign off on a high note.

They owe that to themselves for an effort that’s been above and beyond what most people expected.