Like, I said last year when talking about Gomez at RB, we need to put TAA performance in context to our tactics/shape.
It's VERY obvious by now, we play a lop-sided 4-3-3. Almost goes into a 4-3-2-1 at times with Salah being the 1. As a consequence, our RB (TAA) has less protection than our LB (as Mane tracks back A LOT more often than Mo). In fact, if anything it's Bobby who helps fill in the gaps defensively, as Gini/Midfield slide across to help cover the gap Mo vacates.. and Bobby drops back into the midfield to cover them.
The selflessness of our squad, is what allows Salah to run free on goal half the time and score so many goals. How many clean 1v1s did he miss yesterday (I counted at least 3). But that's part of our game (releasing Mo).
And as I said, as a consequence our RB has less protection.
He was also up against one of the most dangerous left sided attacks in the league. Zaha, PVA and even Schlupp. That's where Palace are most strong. I can understand why he wasn't eager to lose the ball on that side, and was playing safe in the first half.
I don't understand why Robertson's touch was so poor in the first half, or why he was never on the shoulder of their midfield line when the ball was about to be switched to him. I think his offensive positioning was quite poor in that first half. But then again, Townsend is pretty quick too, so perhaps both FBs were wary of being caught out against fresh wingers early. In the 2nd half, after both Palace wide players had a lot more running in their legs, our FBs took up better positions and we looked more dangerous because of it.
TAA gets a minimum of a 6.5 for me for a mature performance. His crossing wasn't actually bad. Sahko actually cleared some stunningly whipped crosses and credit to him for that, otherwise it would have been tap ins. Defensively, Trent limited Zaha to one really dangerous cross the entire match. Which is probably about the best you can probably do against a lopsided, left side orientated Palace attack. Had they scored that, the talk wouldn't/shouldn't have been about TAA. It would have been about how many chances Mo missed yesterday which cost us.