{"id":567319,"date":"2020-09-27T13:33:41","date_gmt":"2020-09-27T17:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=567319"},"modified":"2020-09-27T13:33:41","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T17:33:41","slug":"bianca-baptiste-unable-to-bail-out-crystal-palace-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2020\/09\/27\/bianca-baptiste-unable-to-bail-out-crystal-palace-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Bianca Baptiste Unable to Bail Out Crystal Palace Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

An outstanding display from Crystal Palace<\/a> Women winger Bianca Baptiste wasn’t enough to prevent her side slipping to a 3-2 defeat at home against Blackburn Rovers Ladies in the FA Women’s Championship.<\/p>\n

Bianca Baptiste Performance Worthy of a win as Last-Minute Defeat Breaks Palace Hearts<\/h2>\n

Best Player on the Pitch<\/h3>\n

Baptiste showed all her class this afternoon, with a goal and an assist against Blackburn. Despite her side losing the game, the28-year-old will hold her head high with a display full of skill and work ethic.<\/p>\n

Baptiste’s performance was all-the-more impressive given her admission that she almost walked away from the game<\/a> in 2018. The winger was released by Tottenham Hotspur<\/a> after their promotion to the Women’s Super League – despite being the top scorer for them just one season prior.<\/p>\n

It is clearly acting as a source of motivation – her goal today was her second in three games in the Women’s Championship. She also assisted the first goal, selflessly squaring the ball for fellow winger Cherelle Khassal.<\/p>\n

What was perhaps most impressive was her ability to put the team before herself. Her assist for Khassal’s goal is a good example – but with 80 minutes played, Baptiste was still tracking back and helping out her defence.<\/p>\n

The only thing missing from Baptiste’s performance was a win – but if she keeps on playing with the same level of end product as she did today, then Palace will do well to keep her at the club.<\/p>\n

Blackburn End Poor Start to the Season<\/h3>\n

Credit must be given to a Blackburn side which had started the season with two defeats in a row. Their last trip to London was an unhappy one – losing 1-0 to Charlton Athletic.<\/p>\n

They may have felt today was going to go the same way, having twice fallen behind. Palace opened the scoring after 15 minutes. Baptiste – who was already causing issues with her pace down the right-hand side – was played through by Anoria Georgiou.<\/p>\n

Baptiste could have gone for goal herself but decided to pass the ball across the six-yard-box for Khassal, who finished for her second goal of the season.<\/p>\n

Blackburn hit back through Jade Richards – the centre-back foraying forward to get on the end of Ellie Fletcher’s cross.<\/p>\n

The second-half started with Palace on the front foot – and Baptiste got the goal her performance deserved just five minutes after the restart.<\/p>\n

Running clean through on goal, there was never any doubt that she would finish. Blackburn keeper Francesca Bentley – on-loan from Manchester United<\/a> – could do little about either goal.<\/p>\n

Palace were always a threat on the counter, but Blackburn were knocking on the door for an equaliser and they eventually forced their way through. A goalmouth scramble resulted in a penalty given for the Lancashire side – Ellie Stewart made no mistake from the spot.<\/p>\n

In the end, it was a huge slice of luck which proved to be Palace’s undoing. A flighted cross from Natasha Fenton evaded everyone, including Palace keeper Chloe Morgan, as Blackburn got the winner with virtually the last kick of the game.<\/p>\n

Palace will feel unlucky not to have come away with at least a point – and should Bianca Baptiste keep up her rich vein of form, they will no doubt rediscover their winning touch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An outstanding display from Crystal Palace Women winger Bianca Baptiste wasn’t enough to prevent her side slipping to a 3-2 defeat at home against Blackburn Rovers Ladies in the FA Women’s Championship. Bianca Baptiste Performance Worthy of a win as Last-Minute Defeat Breaks Palace Hearts Best Player on the Pitch Baptiste showed all her class […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3590,"featured_media":567330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[6725,6727,6726,6728,136,6561],"class_list":["post-567319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","tag-bianca-baptiste","tag-blackburn-rovers-ladies","tag-crystal-palace-women","tag-fawc","tag-world-football","tag-wsl"],"modified_by":"Nat Goodlad, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3590"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}