Benteke reaction Leicester 0-3 Palace

Christian Benteke admitted that he had been frustrated by a lack of goals before his header opened the scoring in Crystal Palace’s 3-0 victory away at Leicester.

The striker had failed to find the back of the net in 13 games before he nodded Andros Townsend’s cross past Kasper Schmeichel to set Palace on their way to a comprehensive win at the King Power stadium.

His penalty miss in the final minute of the 2-2 draw with Bournemouth drew a lot of criticism but Benteke believes he deserved to get his first goal of the season.

He said: “As a striker people ask you just to score and these past weeks I have been really frustrated about not scoring goals but also I have been working hard and today I think I deserved that goal and I am obviously really pleased about that.”

“The win shows we are in a good shape. We gave a focussed performance and we really deserved the three points.”

After a disappointing start to the season, the Eagles are now seven Premier League matches unbeaten, with this their first away win of the campaign, and Benteke is amongst those to feel they should have done better with the players at their disposal.

“It has been frustrating situation with the players we have got”, he added. “The fact that we couldn’t score away has been a tough one for us but in this game we showed we are a quality side and that is the way we need to keep it.”

“We were really professional from the first whistle, every player played their part including the substitutes and it’s a well-deserved three points. We didn’t really give them anything apart from a couple of chances and one of them saw a great save from Julian [Speroni] in a game we controlled well.

“We are a team in good form but the toughest thing about playing in the Premier League is to keep going and continue winning games as we try to improve our position in the table but whilst enjoying what have done today, because it is a big win for us, our attention now needs to turn to the next game very quickly.”