“I'm disappointed because you always expect to go back home with something,” he said in his post-match press conference. “Those really important moments weren’t in our favour, and that made it even more difficult.
“[Wilfried Zaha] was offside so it’s difficult to say if that would change the game, but if you score the first goal in the Premier League you know how important it is. At the other end we scored an own goal, and that shows how unlucky we have been lately. It is something we have to face to try to turn things around.
“We were close to Villa. The difference between the two teams today was the own goal. Outside of that we didn’t create very much, but they didn’t create very much as well.
“That is the story of the game today. We are learning the hard way – it’s important for us to keep working.”
Cheick Doucouré was dismissed for two yellow cards in quick succession, but Vieira says the young midfielder will learn from his mistakes.
“He is disappointed, he is frustrated about it,” the manager said. “It is not easy to leave your team with 10 men. But the players did well, they worked hard and tried to create chances to come eback into the game but it was difficult for us today.
“That can happen. He will learn from that incident. When you are a midfielder, sometimes you are going into challenges and this time he was a little bit late.
“He got a red card and he will learn from it. But I think with 10 men we gave the right answer.”
Palace created chances early on but couldn’t capitalise, and Vieira says adjustments have to be made before their next outing.
“With the first chances we created and with Wilfried and the goal he scored, that was our plan: to expose the back-four,” he explained. “Wilfried away from home playing in that position has been really good for us.
“It was our plan to stretch their back four because we knew centrally it would be difficult to find the space. This is what we tried to do.
“There were a couple of offsides, the timing of the runs were not the best or the timing of passing the ball was not the best. It was a question of timing that didn’t allow us to create those opportunities.”