Pierre Sage under pressure as Crystal Palace collapse against Newcastle

Crystal Palace’s season is threatening to unravel and Pierre Sage is feeling the heat.

Newcastle won 2-0 at Selhurst Park on Sunday with second-half goals from William Osula and Harvey Barnes, leaving Palace with their fifth league defeat in eight games and just seven points. The home fans made their feelings clear at the final whistle.

It was a familiar story. Palace had looked the better side in a quiet first half without ever really hurting Newcastle. Then the second half started and everything fell apart.

Barely a minute after the restart Jacob Murphy swung in a dangerous cross and Osula stabbed it home. Moments later Joe Willock thought he’d made it two, only for VAR to chalk it off for offside. Palace didn’t recover. On 58 minutes Barnes finished neatly from Amar Dedic’s cut-back and that was that.

The home crowd, already restless after last week’s 5-0 thrashing at Brighton, began to turn. Boos greeted the full-time whistle. Palace now have the worst defensive record in the Premier League with 19 goals conceded.

Sage, only four months into a three-year contract, faced the cameras afterwards and tried to stay calm.

“There is no noise inside the club,” he said. “The boos are normal because we don’t have the result. The noise is the consequence of the result of the team, and at the moment we don’t have what we expect.

“We missed 15 minutes when we came back from the dressing room. When you let your opponent take the initiative without pressure, without reply, it’s difficult. Today was not a tactical problem but a mental problem.”

He insisted the decision on his future sits with chairman Steve Parish and the owners. “For me, the noise around the team, the noise around the club, it’s only noise.”

Sage arrived from Lens with a strong reputation after finishing second in Ligue 1 and winning the French Cup. Replacing Oliver Glasner was always going to be tough, but few expected things to look this fragile so quickly.

Palace travel to Tottenham next Saturday, then host Liverpool on 8 November. Those two games will tell us a lot about how much time Sage still has.