Crystal Palace ended the Premier League Asia Trophy in third place following a victory over West Brom on Saturday, which meant Palace, following an earlier loss to Liverpool, finished with a bronze medal.
Jason Puncheon, of course confirmed as Palace’s captain under Frank de Boer, has told the Official Website he feels the time in Hong Kong was positive.
A win over West Brom capped off a beneficial spell for the Palace squad, enabling them to bond and work on new areas under de Boer, finishing with a 2-0 victory over the Baggies in another competitive fixture will set up the Eagles nicely for the season ahead.
‘The trip has been a good experience and its nice to have the squad together for a week as a group and its good to be travelling back with a win under our belts. It`s been a week which has seen us play two games, playing a top team in Liverpool and then have finished with a good result in this game against West Brom. This game has been good for us, it was competitive and will set us in good stead as we look to get ourselves ready for the start of the season.’
Puncheon, like de Boer before him, feels Wilfried Zaha is now a marked man and ‘people target him’ after the Palace winger was again subjected for some rough treatment against West Brom.
This will happen given the fact Zaha’s seen as a danger man so the captain will ‘keep an eye’ on this and help protect him.
De Boer is looking to implement a new system at Palace along with his style of play and Puncheon feels the West Brom performance showed positive signs, which has helped the confidence too.
He concluded: ‘This game was different to Wednesday, we had more of the ball but still had to be physical when needed and worked on the shape that the gaffer wants us to play and I thought we did really well. We have been working on the system now during pre-season and we are capable of playing well so just need to be confident playing it and believe in what we are doing.’
