Vieira shares opinion on Leeds penalty
Patrick Vieira has confirmed he thought the last-minute penalty awarded to Leeds was just, and that he would have expected to see it given had the decision rested on a Palace dead ball.
He argued that Palace were “the better team tonight”, sharing the view the team “created the most dangerous situations, chances, and to lose the game that way is hard to take.”
He was then asked for his view on the 93rd-minute penalty which saw Leeds take all three points. It was awarded after the ball struck Marc Guéhi’s hand in the box, and required an on-pitch review by referee Kevin Friend.
The Palace manager was uniquely honest in his assessment, saying: “You know, if it was on the other side I would expect the referee to give the penalty. I had the chance to look at it again and, yeah, I believe it was a penalty.”
He then turned his attention to the wider game, and drew on some positives from the overall performance.
He said: “We created a number of situations and a number of chances and we should at least score one of them. This is the frustration about losing the game tonight.
“I think the performance tonight is more positive. Obviously the outcome of the game wasn’t something we wanted, but the performance was what I wanted from the squad. We defended well as a team, didn’t give them so much space and they didn’t create so many chances.
“I think at the end we were the better team, we just didn’t take our chances. When you don’t take them at this level you get punished straight away. I was really pleased with this performance so what will be important for us is to first recover, because we spent a lot of energy today to play the way we did. Then on Thursday we will go back to work and go into the [Manchester] United game.”