Crystal Palace boss picks out two of his players for special praise after 3-1 win over Burnley

BY MATT WOOSNAM

Roy Hodgson praised attacking duo Wilfried Zaha and Michy Batshuayi after they both scored to help Crystal Palace to an excellent 3-1 victory at Burnley.

Zaha was menacing throughout and his goal was a reminder of his mercurial talent with the ball. He dummied and dummied again, putting several Clarets defenders on the floor, before making space and smashing past Tom Heaton.

He also aided Batshuayi’s goal, playing the ball wide to Aaron Wan-Bissaka, whose cross found the striker and the Belgian thumped it into the back of the net.

“I’m very pleased with the win,” Hodgson said.

“It was a very satisfying performance. It’s never easy to come and win at Burnley, especially with Burnley in good form at this moment in time. We knew the type of problems they would pose and they did pose those problems. We dealt with them extremely well.

“I was very pleased with the way we defended throughout the game. And of course at the other end when we were able to get hold of the ball, we used it wisely and scored three good goals and were it not for Heaton making a few good saves, we could have had another one.”

“Wilf was good, I mean Wilf’s always good. He’s in good form at the moment. He’s a dangerous player to have to mark as a defender when he gets the ball because he’s an extremely good dribbler. He’s got not only dribbling skills but strength to add to that. And at the moment he’s in good goalscoring form.

“He promised me some time ago that he would score at least five goals before the end of the season and this was about two or three weeks ago. He’s already got those five so we’re going to up that total, we’re going to double it: we’re going to get 10. He’s certainly doing what he needs to do and the same goes for Michy Batshuayi.”

 

The Eagles boss reiterated that he feels his side has deserved more in previous games but that the squad has belief in themselves and it is reaping rewards.

“Confidence comes from winning, we never lacked confidence even when we weren’t winning either at home or away and we weren’t necessarily getting the number of points we thought our performance merited. We never lost confidence really. We always believed in ourselves as a team.

“We always thought that we were good defensively and that we had a lot of qualities going forward. But of course you need a lot of victories and a lot of points behind you to really get that feel-good feeling and to get the confidence that lifting yourself up the table that a good points tally gives you.

“But strangely enough, people often mention our away form but some of our best performances in my opinion have actually been at home and sometimes they’ve been in games where we haven’t actually won.

“That’s the strange thing about it but the big thing was we’ve scored goals in these recent weeks ,whereas there was a time in the beginning where we were doing everything right but weren’t putting it in the back of the net and now we are.”