Schlupp voted Crystal Palace Man of the Match in draw vs Tottenham

Jeffrey Schlupp has been nominated as the Crystal Palace Man of the Match in their final game of the season which ended in a 1-1 draw at home to Tottenham Hotspur.

The 27-year-old beat Palace academy graduate Tyrick Mitchell and experienced centre-back Scott Dann in a poll cast by fans of the club.

The Eagles had nothing to fight for heading into matchday 38 as they were guaranteed survival for the next season. The Lilywhites, meanwhile, were pushing for a Europa League spot.

It was Jose Mourinho’s men who took the lead through talisman Harry Kane in the 13th minute and they held that lead until the 53rd minute when Schlupp equalised.

James McCarthy played a corner and Dann headed the ball into Jordan Ayew’s path who in turn fed Schlupp to volley home from close range.

🏆 You voted @Jeffrey_Schlupp as yesterday’s @eToro Man of the Match!#CPFC

— Crystal Palace F.C. (@CPFC) July 27, 2020

It was Schlupp’s third goal of the season, his first in 2020 and first since a 1-0 win over relegated-Bournemouth on December 3, 2019. His first of the campaign was in the preceding game at Burnley which ended 2-0, with Ivory Coast international Wilfried Zaha scoring the first goal.

Schlupp was limited to just 17 Premier League appearances of which 11 were starts, largely due to a hip injury.

Palace ultimately finished the season in 14th place and Schlupp is disappointed they couldn’t have been higher up on the log.

Indeed, at one stage, they were close to the European places with a four-game winning run in which Ayew scored in three of them. However, a seven-game losing run saw the south London club drop down and Schlupp believes avoiding defeat against Tottenham was a good end to the season.

“Since the restart, results haven’t been what we wanted but we wanted to finish off the season well and I think we’ve done that today,” the former Leicester City player said on the Crystal Palace website.

“We’ve had some key injuries. All in all, it has been a good season for us; we wanted to maybe challenge for something a bit higher in the league but it didn’t happen.

“We had some disappointing results but it was important for us to finish well and hopefully we can take that into the next season.

“We deserve a good break first and foremost, and then we get straight back into it with a shorter pre-season than normal and pick-up where we left-off after today.”