TYRICK Mitchell lavished praise on Crystal Palace supporters after the Eagles stormed past Aston Villa 3-0 in their FA Cup semi-final at Wembley on Saturday.
It was a joyous occasion for the sea of claret and blue as Oliver Glasner’s side took the lead through Eberechi Eze’s superb strike past Emi Martinez in the 31st minute.
Palace could even afford to miss a penalty when Jean-Philippe Mateta clipped the outside of the post.
Villa briefly looked like they were boosted but Mateta soon laid off the ball to Ismaila Sarr in the 58th minute and he unleashed a low drive into the bottom-left corner that gave Martinez little chance.
Palace were the much more accomplished side and Sarr made it a perfect ending by scoring his second four minutes into stoppage-time.
Mitchell, 25, played youth football for AFC Wembley before joining Brentford and then Palace in 2016.
“It’s always different when you’re playing at Wembley.” Mitchell said. “This is the main stadium in England, so any time that you get the chance to come here, you know you’re doing something well. Thankfully we’ve done well in the FA Cup and got to the final, so that the fans can enjoy it and we can too.
“It’s always good to be in these types of competitions. The FA Cup’s a big trophy, so to get to the final is a massive achievement.”
Mitchell added: “No match is comfortable, but sometimes the scoreline can lie. They had opportunities, but we knew what we were good at, I knew that we could catch them on the counter.
“You can see in every game, win, lose or draw, that we’ve got a good togetherness within the squad, and you can see that is emulated by the fans. It’s just a positive place to be and we’re all enjoying it.
“[The fans], you can see every game, home and away, they’re amazing, and even here, it’s a big occasion for us and them especially, so they always brought the energy, so we tried to win for them.
“[Glasner is] also just happy for us, but he knows what we can achieve, and this is just one step closer to the trophy. We just have to train, train hard and eventually finish off the season strong in the Premier League.
“Then when the final comes, we’ll try to win that as well.”
Every Palace player was excellent, with Dean Henderson producing two outstanding saves as Villa attacked the start of the second half. Henderson tipped John McGinn’s shot oner the bar and again got his fingertips to Lucas Digne’s drive to divert the ball past his left post.
Daichi Kamada and Adam Wharton were outstanding in midfield, protecting the back three and pressing their opponents.
Wharton jumped up to win possession in the move that led to Sarr’s first goal.
Kamada never stopped running on a humid afternoon.
“Since when I joined Crystal Palace,” Kamada told Palace TV. “I always said I really want to make a new history for Crystal Palace and we have the opportunity now.
“I’m really happy now. I think we defended really compact and we did really good in our defending and with what we wanted to do. We could wait for our situation and then we got the goals.
“After scoring we got a new level of confidence. I think we played very well.
“Our fans were unbelievable and the atmosphere in stadium was top throughout. We have the best fans.
“I wanted to keep the ball more, but we tried to play [forward]. But the most important thing is to win the game and we did that.
“I think this will be the fourth final in my career and last time, I lost the game. So I hope we win the final and we make a new history for Crystal Palace.”
