Manager Alan Pardew was a happy man at full time following our three two victory over Southampton today in the FA Cup fourth round.
His after match press conference covered a number of topics, from Marouane Chamakh and his goalscoring return to the first team, our overall performance and the spirit shown to fightback in the game twice, as well as a few comments about Yaya Sanogo and his belief that Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger would be a happy man to see the loanee get off the mark with his goal.
So from a variety of sources and in no particular order, let’s start with Chamakh.
‘I thought he was the best player on the pitch today. When you think about the players Southampton have got, that’s a real credit to him. He has been injured. The guys said to me ‘you’re going to get a lift in the team when you see him play’. I’ve not really seen a lot of Chamakh in my time. He did particularly well at the back end of last year, but I don’t think even then he will have put in a performance as good as today. He was really good.’
Moving on to our loan striker Sanogo and the game itself and our general performance, he added.
‘I think Arsene Wenger will be very pleased. We worked on our attacking play this week and it was great to see that we had that flamboyance in our play. We have good defenders so I was really pleased with the way we went about trying to attack Southampton because they are difficult to attack.’
Pardew went on to say that we knew they would hold possession and move the ball around well, and defensively they try and open up gaps and pull players out of position, but he felt we stayed resolute and disciplined and kept our shape well to counter that.
‘They got the first goal and thought ‘hmmmm, this could be difficult,’ but we got the immediate equaliser which help us and increased our belief.’
Pards then says it was a great finish to the first half after that point because he felt both teams went at it looking for the win.
‘Both teams were terrific and we came out just on the right side of it.’
As for the second half, he felt it was a different game, especially from us, because we tried to ‘lock’ it up knowing they would come at us, and we had to defend ‘very, very well’ and in many ways it finished as a typical cup tie where a side that wins has to show the best of both sides of their game – attacking to get in front, and then solid defensive work to protect that lead.
Ultimately though he felt both teams ‘deserved a lot of credit’ for the performance, and he felt the neutral especially would enjoy watching the highlights.
The downside from the game for him was us conceding again, and he knows if we can improve defensively we’ll be a lot better as we are letting ‘poor’ goals in, but hopefully that’s something that will turn with greater confidence.
Vital Crystal Palace on:
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