NERVES OF STEEL

Townsend: Silky skills alone will not keep us up.. I should know after my relegation with star-studded Toon

ANDROS TOWNSEND warned Palace that talent alone will not save them from the drop.

The Eagles midfielder knows the pitfalls that occur in a squad full of quality but lacking application. He experienced relegation with Newcastle two seasons ago. Townsend went down with Gini Wijnaldum, Moussa Sissoko, Jonjo Shelvey and Daryl Janmaat at St James’ Park.

There is also a vastly talented squad alongside him at Palace, who climbed out of the bottom three with this convincing win.

Roy Hodgson’s men demolished Town – with Wilfried Zaha at his slithering, dynamic best.

Hodgson’s collection of big names gelled with a robust, fighting attitude setting the tone.

Townsend, ordering a steak baguette as he boarded the team bus, said: “I’ve been in teams before where people have said, ‘You’re too good to go down’ and I know to my cost that’s never the case.

“You watch us, even in our defeats at times, and think how on earth is this team down there, but we are. We’ve had a lot of injuries to key players at key moments and hopefully everyone is on the way back so we can have a strong end to the season and finish it on a high.

“We know we’ve got the talent and that’s important, but in a relegation battle you need more than talent.

“You need heart, you need desire too. You need everything we showed against Huddersfield and we’re going to need that same attitude in the last seven games if we’re going to survive.

“Wilf coming back gives us a massive boost too. We’ve all seen the stats about what happens when he’s not in the team.” In the nine games Zaha was injured, Palace have not won a point. Townsend (above) added: “I don’t need to harp on about that – he’s an incredible player for us.

“We need to keep him fit if we’re going to stay up. If he can keep putting in performances like he did for us here, he’ll be dragging us to more victories.”

A run of four consecutive defeats was broken when James Tomkins opened the scoring (left) and Luka Milivojevic netted his sixth penalty of the season.

Hodgson now wants another long unbeaten run to add to the one Palace went on when he took over.

He added: “We were determined today to take every opportunity that came our way and the longer the game went on, the more composed we looked.”