Palace defender Gary Cahill: We’ve got to stop wasting halves of our matches if we want better results

BY SAM SMITH

Gary Cahill has urged his Crystal Palace team-mates to stop wasting halves of matches if they want to improve their form.

A poor first-half performance by the Eagles was detrimental in their 3-2 defeat against West Ham on Tuesday.

Wilfried Zaha put Palace ahead but Tomas Soucek’s brace had them 2-1 down at half-time. Craig Dawson added a third before Michy Batshuayi struck a late consolation.

The South Londoners have won just twice in 13 matches. Their goals against West Ham were their first in four games.

Cahill said: “We’re disappointed, especially with the first half. It’s been quite a few times recently that we have wasted half a game. Against anyone in this league, you cannot do that.

“We’ve got some important games coming up, these next five or six games are massive for our season. If you win the game, you get a different mood in the dressing room and you get a different mood in training during the week. The quicker we can do that, the better.

“We’re not going to do that by wasting half a game, so we really need to crack down on that. We need to come out flying at the weekend. We need a result, because results breed confidence.

“We need experience and we’ve got bundles of that in the dressing room. But we can’t waste games, we can’t waste minutes in games, we can’t make the mistakes that we’re making at the moment – individually and collectively. We just need to get back to what we know, and I’m sure that’s around the corner soon.”