Crystal Palace can only bring the noise in fits and starts as Liverpool show their credentials as title challengers

The hosts had their moments but lost out to a Liverpool side that are determined to challenge

Michael Oliver gave Liverpool a penalty and sent off a Palace player (Reuters)

Based on this evidence, and much of what had come before it, Crystal Palace and Liverpool are both going to be fun teams to watch this season, teams who look to attack with speed and skill, who will slice you open in a millisecond if you give them the sniff of an opportunity.

And on a warm night in SE25 it made for a fun game too, a game that was predictably dominated by Liverpool but one in which a usually potent attack struggled for clear chances and as the visitors pressed on it left them open to Palace’s most dangerous weapon - the counter attack.

In the end, a ding-dong encounter was settled by two moments involving Mohamed Salah: the first a soft penalty decision that left Palace apoplectic, the second a first career red card for Aaron Wan-Bissaka for denying Salah a clear goalscoring opportunity which left the hosts too short-handed to mount a meaningful comeback attempt with time ticking down.

These games under lights at Selhurst Park have something of a reputation, with team buses full of agitated footballers often delayed as they creep through the tiny, traffic-ridden arteries of south London and a boisterous home crowd that revels in the discomfort of more illustrious guests.

But while the football crackled and fizzed the atmosphere didn’t reach its usual heights. A fairly petty dispute involving the club’s best-known fan group, the Holmesdale Fanatics, meant the absence of the usual clutch of black-clothed supporters in Block B of the Holmesdale Road End. That alone didn’t diminish the atmosphere but with that concentration of fans now dispersed throughout the stadium and the drum that used to maintain the crowd’s rhythm nowhere to be seen, the fans sometimes struggled for a conductor even where the orchestra seemed willing.

Like their team, the Palace crowd did bring the noise in fits and starts but never consistently. Wilfried Zaha was, as ever, a menace but a menace who struggled to get people around him and the supply line feeding him the ball was clogged, to be kind.

Salah crumpled to the ground for Liverpool's penalty (Getty)

The closest he would go was a chance that fell to him quite unexpectedly with less than 20 minutes to go, an effort that even though deflected found its way into the arms of the impressive Alisson. Palace went even closer than that in the first half as Andros Townsend cut in from the right - pick your jaw up off the floor - and curled one past Alisson only to see the ball cannon back off the crossbar.

It was shortly after that when Wan-Bissaka met his unfortunate fate, the saddest possible ending to the evening for arguably Palace’s most-impressive player on the night. It was so frustrating for the young full-back because he had done the hard bit and effectively beaten Salah - that Mo Salah - in a foot race, catching up with him just enough to jab a foot at the ball when the Egyptian had appeared to be racing through unopposed. The margins between success and failure can be very fine though, around an inch or two in this case, and as the defender took Salah and not the ball, Michael Oliver took a red card out of his pocket for the first time this season.

There was still time for one half-decent chance at an equaliser as substitute Max Meyer, making a much-awaited debut, lost his marker but those narrow margins were in play again and the German international couldn’t get a toe on Zaha’s ball drilled across the face of goal.

In the end, it actually took a second Liverpool goal to get the Palace crowd going again but by that point - with injury time ticking down - the outcome had no longer seemed in doubt. Jurgen Klopp’s side have quite clearly plugged some of the obvious holes from last season and while the transfer outlay has been significant, they have bought quality in Alisson and Naby Keita, the latter of whom played one through ball that was so outrageous not even Salah knew what to do with it.

The Reds look like the only team capable of challenging Manchester City for the title but they could yet be closer to third than first even if a sudden spate of injuries at Eastlands are doing their bit for Liverpool’s cause.

For Palace it promises to be a normal season, one of the ups and downs that characterise clubs like these. They have the quality to stay up with breathing room but they have the DNA of a club that can’t help finding itself in trouble when you least expect it. Perhaps this season they buck the trend while Liverpool, on this evidence, will continue to trend upwards.