Back-to-Back wins after 70 seconds behind. Pretty good.
Yes, of course very pleased. It was never going to be an easy game, and the opening goal made our task that much more difficult.
We came back well, played good football and we deservedly led the way at halftime. Then we kept the lead in the second half.
Gary Cahill at 35, Palace’s oldest goalscorer at 35.
Well it was a good job on the right to get the free kick. I think it was Jordan who provoked the foul. An excellent ball from Eberechi Eze, a real cross from this position. And Gary lost his marker, threw his head on the ball, and hit. Very pleased for him, of course pleased for the team. It doesn’t matter if he’s 35, 25 or 15 years old. The important thing is that he did the job.
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What’s new about the Wilf Injury and what kind of problem does that give you now?
Well there is no news. We have to be judged first, it will take some time and I don’t think we’ll know the extent of the injury until Thursday.
Problems, yes, it gives us problems because we are in a flood of injuries right now. We lost McArthur before the game against the Wolves, in that game we lost McCarthy who took his place, we lost Joel Ward, we lost Jeff Schlupp, we lost James Tomkins.
If we lose Wilf, there are six very, very important players on our team, and to be honest, it’s not easy for any team to lose six of their regular players.
You must have been relieved in the end that the Townsend miss didn’t taste you. You had your hands on your head there.
* Laughs *. Yes, I mean, to be fair, those chances are sometimes more difficult than they look from the sidelines, but I was so confident we’d scored. It was a good bit of game, went across the box and Andros came in – I was sure he’d scored.
Unfortunately, when he didn’t, I was unable to control my emotions and keep a poker face.
The first half was probably a bit too open for you as a coach?
What do you mean?
It was a very open game, it was end over …
No, I didn’t get that impression. I thought we passed the ball well in the first half. I thought that the control we sometimes had over the ball in midfield, the way the full-backs came forward and the fact that there was some room, but I didn’t feel like it was particularly open to be completely honest, no.
The second half was probably obviously tighter, but that was because they had the ball a lot more in the second half and they put the ball in our back line more often. But I thought the first half was a good half from both teams. I thought the quality of the football … But to be honest, I didn’t get the impression that we were too open. I just thought that we are actually taking advantage of the space we have created for ourselves, the benefit of getting a good effect from time to time.
You were asked about the pressure yesterday and don’t have that much to do after beating the wolves. How much less there is now after that victory – you are now 15 points away from the relegation zone.
Yes, I’m afraid there will be less pressure by Monday. That’s the full answer to that. It’s nice to get six points better into the game against Leeds than last Friday.
Because then we faced wolves, then a trip to Newcastle and then a trip to Leeds, and we think that this could be a very, very difficult spell for us.
But getting six points off the first two of these games is obviously a relief I suspect – although suggesting and using world relief suggests I felt undue pressure on the results of these games, or didn’t believe we had the capacity or Have ability to get results from the games and that would not be true.
But it’s a nice feeling that these two games, which were very difficult on paper, are now behind us and we’ve got the maximum points from those games. And as you say, we’re a lot further away from those teams at the bottom of the table today than we were before the game started today.
