Wilfried Zaha apologised to Crystal Palace team-mates for his red card at Tottenham

Conor Gallagher has revealed that Wilfried Zaha apologised to his Crystal Palace team-mates for his dismissal in today’s 3-0 loss to Tottenham.

The Eagles were already trailing by two goals in north London before the Ivory Coast international picked up his second booking.

Spurs coasted through much of the remainder of the match although Heung-min Son did add a third goal after first-half strikes by Harry Lane and Lucas Moura.

Zaha will be suspended for Tuesday’s home game against Norwich City. He is also set to be away for much of January and potentially the start of February after being selected by Ivory Coast for the Africa Cup of Nations.

Zaha was booked for two cautions on Spurs defender Davinson Sanchez.

“A little trip [for the first one] – that’s not a booking,” said Gallagher. “The second one maybe but it is what it is – that’s football. He said sorry in the changing room after so we’re going to forget about it, move on and focus on the next game.

“I feel like we started the game well. It started with good intensity and we were the better side for the first 15-20 minutes or so. We gave them two goals in a few minutes and that killed us. We need to do better. We lost concentration and then the sending off killed the game a little bit.”

Palace had requested the fixture be postponed due to Covid-19 cases and illnesses. Manager Patrick Vieira has contracted the virus and missed the match as he isolated. Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise, Christian Benteke, Nathaniel Clyne, Vicente Guaita and Luka Milivojevic were all unavailable.

Gallagher responded: “We said before the game we can’t make excuses. We’re playing the game so we need to do everything we can to win. It’s no excuse. Although there’s a few players missing and the gaffer missing, we’re going to play like it makes no difference to us. Maybe we could have done with a few of those players who weren’t there today but we’ll never know.

“It’s a little bit weird. We didn’t know if we were playing or not but we all prepared like we were playing. I don’t think it makes much difference, it’s a game of football at the end of the day and they won fair and square so we just learn from it and move on from the next one.”