Sunday, 14 May 2017

Confirmed: Hull City Are Relegated, as Crystal Palace avoid the drop with 4-0 win over The Tigers

ibommedia Published: 06:16

Confirmed: Hull City Are Relegated, as Crystal Palace avoid the drop with 4-0 win over The Tigers

Sam Allardyce's record of warding off Premier League relegation is intact: his Crystal Palace beat Hull City 4-0 to send the Tigers down.

Hull City's relegation from the Premier League was confirmed on Sunday as they suffered a 4-0 defeat to Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.

First-half goals from Wilfried Zaha and Christian Benteke, a Luka Milivojevic penalty and a late Patrick van Aanholt strike secured the win for the home side to guarantee their survival, and that of Swansea City, while condemning Hull to a return to the Championship.

Marco Silva's side realistically needed a win to keep their fight to stay up going until the final round of matches, with Swansea's win over Sunderland on Saturday leaving them four points adrift of safety and with a far worse goal difference.

Their hopes took a huge blow after just three minutes, however, as Zaha pounced on Andrea Ranocchia's mistake to put Palace in front, before Benteke's powerful header doubled the lead before the break.

Youngster Jarrod Bowen had a clear chance to grab a lifeline on the hour mark but Wayne Hennessey did not have a save to make in the Palace goal, and Milivojevic's spot-kick and Van Aanholt's close-range effort made certain that Sam Allardyce's record of never being relegated from the top flight remains intact.

Hull, however, will join Middlesbrough and Sunderland in dropping down to the Championship for next season.
Puncheon had earlier been fortuitous not to concede a penalty after deflecting a Kamil Grosicki free-kick behind for a corner with his hand, and it seemed that fortuity was firmly against Silva's side when, minutes into the second a moiety, the injured Harry Maguire had to be superseded after Ranocchia and Andy Robertson had already been superseded at half-time.

Bowen was one of those assailing supersessions and he missed a golden chance to halve the deficit on 61 minutes, miscuing a moiety-volley from a Sam Clucas cross from the left with the goal at his leniency at the far post.

The visitors relished 74 per cent of the possession in the second half as Palace dropped deep to preserve their advantage, but they infrequently looked liable to integrate to their meagre total of 36 league goals for the season.

Benteke skewed a promising chance for a third wide but it proved to be of little consequence.

Dawson brought down Jeffrey Schlupp as he raced into the area on the contravention-attack, sanctioning Milivojevic to dispatch the penalty in confident fashion with just five minutes of mundane time left.