Jean-Philippe Mateta sinks Tottenham and gives Crystal Palace its first victory | first division

Oliver Glasner doesn't believe in magic. He is an admirably pragmatic man who trusts in his principles. He trusted them at the end of last season, when Palace looked like world champions and everything was going well, and he trusts them now, when Palace look like a relegation candidate and everything is going wrong. Give it time and the balance will return; The principles will have their effect. Or you could just wait for Tottenham to visit.

Trust the principles all you want, the Spurs will remain Spurs, a paradox that suggests there is a deeper process that ultimately matters far more than the superficial processes that can be seen and analyzed. It is a club with a fragile soul, always capable of performing terribly.

Poor Mikey Moore, making his full Premier League debut, barely got to see it. Unsettled by the Palace press, Spurs began their worst half of the season apart from the second 45 in Brighton. If anything, it got worse after the break. “We need to have a much clearer head,” said Ange Postecoglou. “It was kind of a battle. “It was a start and a stop, a lot of stops and we didn’t deal with it.”

For Palace, it was a much-needed league win, their first of the season, which should ease the pressure on Glasner. “All our performances were good, but we failed a little,” he said. “Today we showed courage and intensity, and maybe that's what we were missing.” As always, the focus was on the wings, on the way Daniel Muñoz's pressure led to the goal and the way Tyrick Mitchell closed down Pedro Porro to force him to finish a cross in stoppage time.

It is still a little baffling that Palace have reached this point of anxiety, with potential replacements being openly discussed. Certainly, Glasner still seems quite popular at Selhurst Park, with fans chanting his name after the final whistle. Saturday's game against Wolves suddenly looks a lot less daunting.

In the final seven games of last season, Palace scored 19 points and scored 21 goals. “That wasn't the truth about Palace,” Glasner had said. But what is the truth? They certainly weren't the first eight games of this season, in which they only got three points and only scored five goals. Palace's dismal start to the campaign couldn't simply be regression to the mean, could it? There are reasons; there always are.

Glasner has been openly critical of the way the club signed four players on deadline day. But even if their deals had been completed in time to be fully integrated, Palace had the fourth-lowest net spend in the division. And it's not like the signings that came earlier in the window have had much of an impact so far.

For now the absences are much more evident than their substitutes. It is not just that Michael Olise's imagination and drive have been lost, but that others have suffered without him creating space for them. Likewise, Joachim Andersen's defensive qualities are missed, but also his wide diagonal passes and changes of play.

Jean-Philippe Mateta, after a golden finish last season, had struggled to get going, which is perhaps a result of his Olympic efforts with France, but may also have to do with him simply getting less service.

It hasn't helped that the midfield has been hampered by injuries. Cheick Doucouré has only managed one league start, while Adam Wharton, who made such an impression after signing from Blackburn in January, has been struggling with a groin problem and may need surgery, although he had a decent game on Sunday. To make matters worse, Jefferson Lerma was forced to leave with a hamstring injury midway through the first half.

Palace had trained with a back four last week, having tested the system in a behind-closed-doors game against Ipswich in the last international break, but they started with the familiar Glasner 3-4-2-1, although as he would say, it What really matters are the principles of the game.

Those principles allowed Palace to trouble Spurs with their pressing, leading to the goal when Porro was forced to play a horrible ball that bounced in his own area to Micky van de Ven, who was dispossessed by Muñoz. The Colombian's cross was finished off by Eze and Mateta, marking the third of the season in the League.

Spurs had chances – Van de Ven's shot deflected off Brennan Johnson and hit a post – while Dean Henderson made an excellent low save from James Maddison – but Palace should have been out of sight midway through the second half, Eze and Mateta both take advantage of very good opportunities. That made the ending more edgy than perhaps it should have been, but Palace's season is finally underway.