In what had to be the shock result of the day in the Barclays Premier League on Saturday, Tony Pulis’ Crystal Palace side took advantage of a capacity crowd at Selhurst Park to lead his relegation threatened side to an improbable 1-0 win over leaders Chelsea. Palace are now in 16th position, 5 points ahead of Cardiff in 18th in the drop zone.

The loss for Chelsea sees them remain in 1st place but now Liverpool have a game in hand and are only a point behind; Man City, after Arsenal did the Blues a favour and held them to a tie at the Emirates, are now 2 points behind with 2 games in hand; and Arsenal are now 5 points behind the Blues having played the same number of games.

So the big winner from Chelsea’s shocker against the Eagles is Liverpool who if they can beat Tottenham on Sunday will take the lead in the table by 2 points over Chelsea. In an extremely lacklustre display, the forward/midfield five of Schürrle, Hazard, Torres, Lampard and Luiz did not seem to be able to unlock the Palace defence all day and indeed Oscar came on for Luiz at half time emphasizing Luiz’ ineffectiveness and the need for Jose to make a major change to try to change the outcome of the game. Salah and Ba came on for Lampard and Schürrle early in the second half too, as it was clear Mourinho was not happy with his side’s performance and was trying to spark some kind of reaction. Unfortunately, the changes did not have the desired affect and the Blues were simply just not “at the races” as even the supreme talents of Oscar and Hazard, so often the architects of Chelsea magic this season, just could not find the inspiration for that piece of genius to turn the game in Mourinho’s favour.

The Eagles played the game at a higher tempo, seemed to want the game more and were led by the likes of the tricky Yannick Bolasie along with accomplished displays from the sharp looking Joe Ledley and the dangerous Cameron Jerome who deserved to win a penalty after a clumsy challenge from Gary Cahill.

Chelsea had a few chances to score but when the Palace goal went into the Chelsea net on 52 minutes off John Terry’s head leaving Cech stranded, it was nothing more than Crystal Palace deserved and in all honestly they really deserved to win by more. The game was good to watch and both sides did have several chances but it always looked like Crystal Palace were the more likely to score again.

Chelsea can take solace in the fact that they are still top of the League for now and they do have the easier run-in of all the title rivals but if the Palace loss has taught them anything, it must be that they cannot take anything for granted and if they want to win the title then they will have to win it and it will certainly be going down to the wire with the match vs Liverpool away at Anfield sure to be pivotal.