The Eagles struggled to play their usual game in the first-half at the Gtech Community Stadium, falling behind to Brentford early on thanks to Kevin Schade’s impressive solo goal after quarter-of-an-hour.
But a shift in formation was the inspiration for a much-improved second-half display with Palace largely dominated and claimed a fully-deserved draw from – Andersen with the equaliser after beating goalkeeper Mark Flekken to a loose ball inside the box.
The weather in west London was symbolic of events on the pitch as early sunshine was broken by torrential downpour when Brentford scored, improving again in the second period as Palace wrested control of the game.
Andersen laughed: “I do not know what happened with the rain! The sun was shining, then it was raining the hardest I’ve seen for a long time… it was a crazy game!
“The first-half we played bad. We let them have the ball and didn’t press like we wanted. We didn’t feel good in the game, so we changed some things at half-time and the second-half was much better.
“We didn’t play our best game, but at the end, we just tried to fight, we tried to do what we could, and then you need to show that spirit in the game as well.”
Pressed on the nature of that change, Andersen expanded: “We had Cheick [Doucouré] and Jefferson [Lerma] next to each other [in midfield] and Ebs [Eze] in front of them.
“The change was we put Ebs on the right and Jeff in the middle, so we played with a flat three in the middle. That helped us to better open the game up and have more opportunities on the ball.”
