‘Light and fragile’ – Patrick Vieira’s verdict on Palace’s last friendly tune-up before Premier League returns
Patrick Vieira labelled his Crystal Palace side as “light and fragile” in the final third after their 2-1 friendly victory over Spanish side Real Valladolid.
The Eagles secured a win in their final warm-up game before the Premier League resumes on Boxing Day thanks to a second-half Wilfried Zaha brace on Friday night.
Despite registering 10 first-half shots, Palace were a goal down at half time after Sergio Leon headed Monchu’s free-kick past Vicente Guaita.
Zaha equalised for Palace in the 56th minute when he broke into the penalty area on the right-hand side and fired a shot past Jordi Masip.
He secured the win for the South Londoners when he converted a penalty which was won by Michael Olise.
“I’m pleased with the win,” Vieira told PalaceTv.
“It’s always good to get back to winning football matches, and today was really competitive.
“We found it difficult to create chances. We came back in the second half, and we played better in the last third.
“This is one of the reasons why we scored those two goals. It was good to win, but I was pleased with the performance as well.
“We have to learn. In the first half, we had a couple of situations where we had really good chances to score goals, and we didn’t.
“We’re still really light, fragile and not aggressive enough offensively to create those chances and to score those goals.
“When you play those types of games, you can get punished and be behind straight away.
“We have to grow up and be more aggressive when we’re in front of goal. We have to take our chances.”
Palace take on Fulham on Boxing Day and find themselves just two points off the European spots in the Premier League table.
“We have the weekend off,” said Vieira of the plans in the build-up to taking on Marco Silva’s side.
“We have a double session on Monday. We have to catch up, because we still have a lot that we want to improve and we want to challenge ourselves.
“We want to compete in every single game that we’re going to face, and the best way to do that is to prepare better.
“When we start [the Premier League], the games will be one after the other one, so the big work has to be done now.”
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