Speaking recently on The Molineux View podcast, Tim Spiers criticised Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha following Wolverhampton Wanderers’ clash with the south London side last Friday.
The fixture itself saw Wolves run out comfortable 2-0 winners, thanks to goals from Rayan Ait-Nouri and Daniel Podence, with Palace’s main impact on the match being Luka Milivojevic’s red card in the 86th minute.
The game was one topic of conversation on a recent episode of The Molineux View podcast, in which The Athletic’s Wolves correspondent, Spiers, took aim at Palace forward Zaha for his actions in the match, labelling the 27-year-old a ‘crybaby’.
He said: “There was one incident which people will remember with Zaha in the second half. Zaha – I mean, what a crybaby. I’m not a fan of his, to be honest, the way he goes about trying to wind up opponents and moaning at referees.
“He started, people might remember, by ruffling Ait-Nouri’s hair in a very patronising, passive-aggressive manner, and then he’s sort of headbutting him almost, really, or at least putting his forehead against Ait-Nouri’s, and then he put his hand on his face.
“Now, there are two yellow cards there, but what I was struck by was that a) Ait-Nouri didn’t retaliate, he didn’t do anything back, and b) he didn’t dive.”
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TIF Thoughts on Tim Spiers’ comments regarding Wilfried Zaha…
From Spiers’ comments, it is clear that the journalist was not impressed with the actions of Zaha in the match, particularly those towards Wolves’ debutant teenager, Ait-Nouri.
In the game itself, Zaha was ineffective, conceding one foul, picking up a yellow card, being dispossessed twice and registering three poor touches over the course of the 90 minutes, resulting in a very poor WhoScored match rating of 5.74/10 – ranking him as the second-worst player to feature in the match, behind only the sent-off Milivojevic.
As such, it could be argued that Zaha’s actions were as a result of his below-par performance in the match, however, in our opinion, that is no excuse to behave the way he did.
In any case, it would appear that the young Frenchman had the last laugh in the fixture, scoring a debut goal which helped his side to take all three points against Palace, which had taken them level on points at the top of the table.