Perserverance pays off for Freedman (From Your Local Guardian)

Perserverance pays off for Palace boss Freedman

11:40am Monday 20th February 2012 in Sport By Graham Moody

Dougie Freedman believes perseverance was behind Crystal Palace's thumping 4-0 defeat of Watford on Saturday.

On loan striker Chris Martin scored twice and Wilfried Zaha and Kagisho Dikgacoi also netted as the Eagles recorded their first league victory at the seventh attempt in 2012.

Despite the lack of wins, Freedman did not panic and the Eagles manager, who named the same starting 11 for the third game in a row, was pleased to see his players did not either.

"The players were fine," he said.

"It is not as if we have been losing 3-0 or 4-0, we have drawn the last three and we refuse to get beat and leak goals.

"It is a case of doing what we have been doing and eventually we will get there and it was pleasing to see the players didn't have any negative thoughts on their mind about the win and they stuck to what they do best.

"We have been performing fantastically well and the performances have merited wins so it was pleasing to get what we deserved on Saturday.

"Over the last three or four games I felt we didn't quite achieve what the performances merited but on Saturday we did.

"Throughout the game we played well.

"We had to defend very well at times and the players played as a unit but there were parts when we were outstanding in terms of our attacking display.

"When we attack like that we can open up most defences in this division."

Freedman revealed left-back Dean Moxey was due to be in the squad after almost three months out injured but pulled out on Friday night after falling ill.