Liam Keen comment: Missed opportunities and mistakes plague Wolves defeat

A lacklustre performance was compounded by Vitor Pereira's side conceding four poor goals on their way to a disappointing defeat.

It was an evening that offered up short-term and long-term questions about this team as they aim to take the next step in their development under the head coach.

Team selection

For weeks, Pereira has insisted he will not gift minutes to players and he will fight to win every single game between now and the end of the season with his best possible starting XI.

In the pre-match press conference this week he changed his tone slightly and hinted at making changes to his team and as the starting XI was announced, it showed he had brought six players in and handed a big opportunity to many of them.

That chance, by and large, was wasted. Of those changes, Dan Bentley struggled in goal, Rodrigo Gomes looked lightweight at wing-back, Nasser Djiga was uncomfortable at centre-back and Pablo Sarabia was extremely wasteful in the forward areas.

In those four players we have a mixture of youth and experience, both given a chance for different reasons, and it never worked out at Selhurst Park.

Pereira will have learned plenty about his squad from this defeat and it proves Wolves still have a way to go to improve for next season.

The decision to give some players an opportunity makes sense when you consider that Wolves are already safe and have little to play for other than a best possible Premier League finish in the table.

But fans also travelled a long way on a Tuesday night and paid their hard-earned money to see a good performance and result - they got neither.

In the short-term Pereira got his team selection wrong as Wolves were lacklustre at best, in the long-term he may have learned enough about his squad to know what needs to change.

"I don't want to speak about individual players, I want to speak about the team," Pereira said.

"I gave them minutes and the opportunity to play because they deserved it, they've worked a lot in training and deserved the minutes.

"But it was about the mental level, the mental focus to compete in this kind of game.

"We cannot come here and in the moment of the game we are losing 3-2, we had a chance with our best moment in the game to make it 3-3 twice and another mistake finished the game."

Mistakes

When the players coming into the team are performing poorly, you desperately need the stalwarts to put in a strong display, but Wolves also suffered on this front.

Emmanuel Agbadou has been a revelation since arriving in January and despite the odd under-par performance here and there, he has been excellent.

But his performance against Crystal Palace was his worst in a Wolves shirt by some distance, despite the fact he put his team ahead with his first goal for the club.

The Ivorian failed to build on that start, picked up an early booking and was flustered all night.

His passing was particularly poor and he gave the ball away far too often. On two occasions he gave the ball away that directly led to a Palace goal and he had a hand in the third too when Ben Chilwell's free-kick deflected off him.

It was an evening to forget for a normally so reliable performer.

Battling midfielder Andre was also disappointing and understandably taken off at half-time, while experienced players like Nelson Semedo and Matheus Cunha that came on in the second half had little impact.

Competing

As Vitor has very succinctly expressed in recent weeks, Wolves' aim for next season will be to try and compete with teams such as Brighton, Palace and Brentford.

Taking that step up in consistency to scrap around mid-table, with the hope of a European push or cup run, is the next step for this team if the right decisions are made.

But recent weeks have proved they still have a long way to go.

Wolves were fairly beaten by Brighton last time out and never got going, while a much-changed Palace side made short work of them on Tuesday.

On Sunday Wolves face Brentford needing a good end to the season, but also showing they can perform against these teams.

After the six-game winning run, Wolves will not want to end the season with four consecutive defeats.

The fans deserve something to cheer about at Molineux and the need to take some positivity and momentum into the summer is great.