Crystal Palace boss Vieira bemoans lack of cutting edge – but hopes to remedy that in transfer market

Patrick Vieira was frustrated with Crystal Palace’s lack of cutting edge in front of goal in Tuesday’s EFL Cup defeat to Watford – and confirmed afterwards that the club are still trying to bring more attackers in.

The Eagles lost 1-0 at Vicarage Road with Ashley Fletcher’s 86th minute goal sealing the contest.

Palace have failed to score in their opening three matches in all competitions. They have been linked with a move for Eddie Nketiah, but reports have claimed they are £10million shy of Arsenal’s £20m valuation.

Vieira said: “I am really disappointed because I think we did some good stuff tonight [at Watford].

“I’m really frustrated because I think that tonight we should be the team going through to the next round. We played well enough, we created enough chances but we couldn’t score the goal.

“We have to keep working, the players have to realise that to win football matches we need to score goals – so we need to change our mentality upfront. We created enough chances to win the game, we had different challenges tonight, we had possession, but we’re still missing that edge to score those goals.

“At times we are a little bit sloppy, we make a lot of mistakes, a lot of wrong decisions when we are in the opposition’s half.

“This is why it is really important for us to try and bring a couple of players in upfront because we need to give players a bit more competition.

“We need to change our mentality to be more aggressive in the opposition’s half, more aggressive in the box to score the goals because if we don’t score we can’t win football matches.”