Speroni: I will be on my Guard
JULIAN SPERONI equalled Nigel Martyn’s record of 111 clean sheets for Crystal Palace when he shut out Leicester two weeks ago.
And while it’s hard to see him moving out on his own today with Palace hosting Manchester City, the Argentinian knows the law of averages means Pep Guardiola’s men have to fire a blank one day.
Speroni said: “Records are not the kind of thing you think of when you first come to a football club and the fact that it happened, it makes me really proud.
“Another one on Sunday? Yeah, why not?
“We know it’s going to be tough, they have been playing really, really well.
“But there are no easy games in the Premier League and we are going to face them in the same way we face every single game.
“We want to face the best, test ourselves against the best and who knows?”
Palace were beaten 3-2 by Arsenal on Thursday but Speroni hopes they can take what was a better second-half display – and the better performances on the whole since Roy Hodgson took over – into the game.
He added: “The spirit of this team is really good.
“We keep going, we keep fighting, it doesn’t really matter if it’s the first minute or the 96th.
“We finally got the goals late in the game on Thursday and that’s because of the character, that never-give-up spirit.
“Without giving anything away, we’ve been working on every single area. Not just the defence, but every single aspect of the team.
“You can see the difference, you can see how the performances have been really, really good.
“But of course we are in a relegation battle and we need to make sure we can carry on.”