Vieira: Change in mentality needed to score

First-team

25 Aug 2021

Patrick Vieira expressed his frustrations about Crystal Palace’s League Cup clash with Watford on Tuesday night, saying he felt the Eagles did more than enough to win, but failing to capitalise on chances led to defeat.

Palace managed four shots on target to Watford’s two and enjoyed 66% of possession, but for all their dominance, were undone in the 86th-minute by Ashley Fletcher’s winner.

Vieira suggested the goals needed to win going forward would come via a change in mentality, saying Palace need to be more aggressive with their opportunities; a view Joel Ward also shared.

Here’s what the manager had to say:

“I am really disappointed because I think we did some really good stuff tonight and I’m really frustrated. I think that tonight we should be the team going through to the next round. We played well enough, created enough chances but we couldn’t score the goals.

“We have to keep working, players have to realise that [to win] football matches we need to score goals. So we need to change our mentality up front to score those goals. Because, like tonight, like Brentford, we created situations, we created chances and we need to make the right decisions to allow ourselves to win.

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“We had different challenges tonight, we had possession, we created enough chances but we’re still missing this kind of edge to score those goals. We had a lack of determination or aggression to score that goal, to make that right decision.

“It’s the mental strength that we have to bring to allow ourselves to score those goals, because we create enough chances. When you look at the last two games we played, we had the balls inside the box. But we need to change our mentality to be more aggressive in the opposition half, to be more aggressive in the opposition box.”

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