VIDEO: All Five Of Crystal Palace’s Goals From The 5-3 Win At Barnet

Crystal Palace tasted victory in their first pre-season friendly of the season away at Barnet yesterday, running out as 5-3 winners over Martin Allen’s side.

In what was a goal-packed afternoon, the hosts took an almost instant lead when Akinde put them in front after just over a minute of play, only for Dwight Gayle to equalise with a low free-kick just after.

The prolific Palace frontman added a second quickly, taking the ball down on his chest before cutting in towards the edge of the 18-yard-box and curling a lovely strike towards the far corner of Graham Stack’s goal.

Our third goal of the afternoon saw Gayle complete his hat-trick, racing onto a pass through the middle before casually slotting past the despairing Barnet keeper just after the interval.

Our fourth and fifth of the day arrived through academy star Reise Allassani and Fraizer Campbell, and despite our hosts adding two more themselves, the game ended in relatively comfortable fashion for Alan Pardew and his players.

Below is a video of the goals in question; make sure you keep an eye out for Gayle’s second, it really was a special strike.

Enjoy.

https://twitter.com/gifs_cpfc/status/619915076095578112

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Four Palace Academy Stars Offered Professional Contracts

Further to yesterday’s piece highlighting the fact that Ryan Inniss, Reise Allassani, Jake Gray and Jerome Binnon-Williams were set to become free agents over the summer, it has now been confirmed that they will all be offered new deals.

Whilst first-team chances may have been extremely hard to come by for any academy graduate in recent seasons, it seems as though Alan Pardew and the academy coaching staff are more than happy with the players mentioned above, giving them all hope of being involved at some stage over the next year or so.

All four have often been trumpeted as the potential “next big thing” over the course of their time with us, but thanks to the barriers that are put in place by the weekly grind for points in the Premier League, the last two seasons have proven to be something of a write-off when looking to use them as part of a match day squad.

With Jonny Williams and Wilfried Zaha having been the last two players to easily make the step up from the academy to the first-team, some will wonder how long we’ll have to wait for the next player who is viewed as too good to ignore; but with news of these new contracts, there remains a chance that one of the names mentioned above could buck the recent trend.

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