Allardyce encouraged as Palace claim vital points

SAM ALLARDYCE was typically bullish in his assessment of Crystal Palace’s survival chances on Friday.

The message to his players was: Listen to me and I’ll keep you up.

And here at Selhurst Park yesterday, his players provided hope that all is not lost in their campaign to escape the drop.

It wasn’t pretty. But it rarely is with Allardyce teams. Effective, though? Absolutely.

This, the manager’s second league win since taking over, lifted Palace out of the bottom three.

‘It’s an important win and clean sheet for us; we showed resilience today,’ he said. ‘We made the right decisions, made the right runs and passes. That was encouraging for me and that’s from the concentration of the last few weeks.’

Middlesbrough will take a worried look below them; they were lucky to lose only 1-0. Palace controlled the first half, and the troubles of the past fortnight were a distant memory when Patrick van Aanholt fired home beautifully from the edge of the box after Daniel Ayala’s poor header.