The lead wasn’t extended until the second half, James McCarthur making it three with 18 minutes remaining.
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Crystal Palace beat struggling Stoke City 4-1 on Sunday with defenders James Tomkins and Scott Dann both scoring from set pieces in a three-minute first half spell.
On twelve minutes, Stoke’s vulnerability from dead ball situations was exploited again.
Stoke City have conceded four goals in three of their last four Premier League games.
Tomkins limped off at half-time and was replaced by Delaney, but it did not affect the hosts’ rhythm. Then later, at 4-0, Delaney would nip in to prevent Wilfried Bony from tapping into an empty net.
Manager Alan Pardew claimed the £13million summer signing deserved an global recall following his first Eagles goal in the thrashing of Stoke.
Palace were rewarded for the dominance ten minutes later, when a deep corner fell to James McArthur on the left hand side of the box.
Palace continued to create chances and Dann would have scored his second goal of the game had Bojan not hooked his header off the line following Puncheon’s corner.
Stoke have now shipped 50 goals in 2016, eight more than any other Premier League side and have conceded four times in six of their last 11 league games, much to Hughes’ frustration. We are all trying but for some reason it is not clicking.
“Andros has been threatening to play like that and I hope big Sam was watching”, Pardew told Sky Sports.
Easily one of his best performance in a Palace shirt, Townsend was a constant threat all game.
“Clearly the start didn’t help our situation”, he said.
“Everybody is together. We have to get ourselves out of this situation, and there’s confidence we will”.
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“It’s key we stay in games – at the moment we are just chasing games too much”. We’re definitely hurting, but the relationships in the dressing room – between players, and staff and players – are good.
