James McCarthy pulls no punches on Crystal Palace’s display against Southampton
James McCarthy has admitted Crystal Palace were not good enough in their 2-0 defeat against Southampton.
Goals from Nathan Redmond and Stuart Armstrong sealed the Eagles’ first Premier League defeat since December 21.
The Irishman said: “As a squad, as a team, we know we’re a lot better than that. Each and every one of us know it’s not good enough.
“Obviously everyone’s played on Saturday and we went [to Manchester City] and put in one hell of a performance. That’s not easy to get away from and Tuesday we wanted to win the game and push on but unfortunately we weren’t at the races.
“They [Southampton] started brightly, made a few changes and unfortunately, with the squad we’ve got just now, we’ve got a lot of injuries and we’d have been happy to make a few changes maybe and push on.
“There’s no point making excuses. We’re put out there and we need to put on a good performance and unfortunately each and every one of us didn’t perform.”
Palace had one lucky break coming out of the Saints reverse as the FA confirmed that Wilfried Zaha would face no retrospective action after appearing to poke James Ward-Prowse in the eye as the pair bickered leaving the pitch at half-time.
The Southampton full-back always seems to try and rile Zaha and the Ivory Coast international was sent off at St Mary’s last season – picking up a second yellow card for sarcastically applauding referee Andre Marriner moments after tangling with Ward-Prowse.
Palace have a free weekend after being knocked out of the FA Cup by Derby.
“There are three or four of them that I’m hoping might be ready for the Sheffield United game,” said Eagles boss Roy Hodgson. “They are still not back at the moment but we’ll have extra coaching and training time.
“It would have been very difficult for us to change the team who have been working so hard over this period if we did have a game on Saturday – because the others wouldn’t have quite been ready. With 10 or 11 days I’m hoping they’ll make it.”
Meanwhile, former Dulwich Hamlet and Welling United defender Jay Rich-Baghuelou featured for the Eagles’ U23 side against Charlton Athletic on Wednesday.
The Croydon-born youngster previously trialled for the Addicks and Reading.
PICTURE BY KEITH GILLARD
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