ISMAILA Sarr said his winning goal for Crystal Palace against Ipswich Town at Selhurst Park last weekend was for “my guy” Jean-Philippe Mateta.
Sarr finally broke down the Kieran McKenna’s stubborn visitors when he went into the area and chipped over goalkeeper Alex Palmer in the 82nd minute to give the Eagles a third successive Premier League win.
Mateta missed the game as he was recovering from the blow to the head from Millwall goalkeeper Liam Roberts in the fifth round of the FA Cup the previous weekend.
It was Sarr’s third goal in three games and he now has eight this season in all competitions.
Oliver Glasner’s side are eleventh, three points off their FA Cup quarter-final opponents Fulham at the end of this month.
” I did it for JP – he is my guy,” Sarr said. “He is a good guy.
“The game was tough, but we won, so I am happy for myself and the team. We need to keep going and working hard.
“The first half was tough, but in the second, we scored, and it’s good we got the three points.
“Ipswich are a good team. Before the game I knew it would not be easy.
“The team is working hard every time, every game – the Premier League and FA Cup. The team will be ready every game.
“I don’t know [if Palace will win the FA Cup], but you have to try.”
Eagles defender Chris Richards made seven tackles, the highest in the game.
“A win and a clean sheet, you can’t really ask for much more,” Richards said.
“Our performance wasn’t the best, but three points are three points. We knew Ipswich were going to fight – they’re fighting for survival – and so we knew that they were going to throw the kitchen sink at us.
“We expected that and we knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. But at the end of the day, we stuck to the game plan, missed a few shots, made it a little bit harder than it should have been – but we got one in the end, so that’s all that matters.”
Ipswich have only seventeen points and are six points off safety, but Glasner wasn’t surprised they made it difficult for his side.
“It was a tough game, a game how we expected it,” Glasner said. “Ipswich made it difficult for us, and they make it difficult for any opposition in the league. I think they haven’t got the results maybe they’ve deserved in the last weeks.
“We knew, especially when we missed a few clear chances, that makes it just even harder. We can’t always expect that the players will perform at their top level, like they did against Villa, being very efficient, because we’re all not always on our top level.
“But we could see a big effort from the beginning, I could see that we created many chances and we missed them. Of course, they also had two or three – we needed Dean Henderson in two or three situations to help us.
“And then it was important to stay patient, because in the last similar games against Everton and Brentford, we made the decisive mistake and lost the game, whereas we waited for this situation and then we were ruthless with Ismaila Sarr’s finish, and took the win.
“I’m really pleased now, four wins in a row, three Premier League wins in a row. It’s tough for every team in the Premier League to get three wins, and this group did it, so I think we all can be very pleased with the results and with the performances in the last weeks.
“Every team in the Premier League can score a goal. And when Ismaila cleared off the goal-line [from an Ipswich corner], it was after a set-play. They did it well, they scored a similar goal against Nottingham [Forest] in the FA Cup. We were prepared, but they were blocking well.
“It’s the same with how we score goals. It’s the Premier League, it’s the best league in the world, and therefore we need to be at our top in defending, because what we know is that we always can create chances and score goals.
“Even today, I think our xG was 3.5, so this is outstanding. But we missed the chances. And then we stayed patient, waited for the next situation – and again, an amazing finish.
“Now it’s also a moment you don’t have very often during a season to breathe, because we have three weeks, no competitive game, and we will breathe and prepare in the best way to be ready for the end of the season.”
Palace were in Marbella this week for a training camp.
Their next game is that tie against the Cottagers at Craven Cottage on March 29.
