Regardless of all of the good work that Ole does, I find that he doesn't necessarily have the courage to take chances with his first XI and subs. Whilst an overall lack of match sharpness was certainly a factor, we could have tried to mitigate that given that we did have one pre-season match.
Martial, Pogba, and Lindelof didn't play any pre-season football with United. It was quite clear that they weren't in sync with the rest of the team (to varying degrees). James also played on the right instead of the left. Why couldn't Ole have fielded a midfield of McTominay-van de Beek-Fernandes? Why couldn't James play on the left and Rashford on the right? Why couldn't Fosu-Mensah play at CB with one of Dalot or Brandon Williams at right back? Why couldn't Ighalo start in place of Martial?
Sure, we may not have had our strongest XI on paper, but at least we'd have had a side that'd be more familiar with and get more out of each other. The likes of Pogba and Martial could then have been options off the bench to make us even better. As it stands, though, our overall sloppiness and lack of sharpness was telling. Whenever Palace pressed us at the start, the midfielders didn't have instant options to play a pass to, and they needed extra touches to settle on the ball. Both Maguire and Lindelof became hesitant to play through the midfield, which slowed us down big time and made us easier to defend.
Maybe Ole wants more good players in his squad before he can take those chances, but at this point, if fielding our best XI gives us this kind of a performance, then he may have no choice but to take chances as the team continues to sharpen up and get ready for a long season ahead.