On Ebere Eze and keeping players fit…
“I think this season has been fractured for him because he's had two quite lengthy injuries. After the first injury we got him back and it looked good and then he picked up that injury against Luton, which was especially unfortunate because it became a much worse injury than we feared it might be to start off with. But he's worked hard and the medical people have worked hard to get him back into the position he's in now.
"But as far as we are concerned as a football club, we really believe that if we're going to get close to where we thought we were at the end of last season, it's going to be because [Michael] Olise who missed six months of football, [Ebere] Eze who has probably missed about three months of football recently, they're the guys you need playing on a regular basis because they are the real quality attacking players that we have.
“Then of course we need to get Odsonne Edouard back competing with Jean-Philippe Mateta for a forward place, and we need to keep people like Matheus França and [Naouirou] Ahamada going strongly to compete for the positions in wide areas.
“If we can do that, if those players can continue to do as well as we think they've done as they've now poked their head above the parapet, I think that bodes quite well.
“Our squad isn't as lengthy as some teams’ squads and that goes for all the teams in our position in the league. The really big squads are at the top end of the league. If you're going to have a really good season, you really do need to keep some of those important players in your team fit to play on a regular basis.
“If we're going to consistently miss very important players for two or three months at a time like now with [Cheick] Doucouré, that's going to be tough because it is hard to get hold of those players in the first place. It's hard for a club like Crystal Palace to get a Doucouré, to get an Olise, to get an Eze, to get a [Joachim] Andersen, to get a [Marc] Guéhi.
