Wilfried Zaha Crystal Palace
Wilfried Zaha says he would be a “chicken” if handed over penalty taking responsibility to a Crystal Palace teammate. The 30-year-old scored from the spot as the Eagles beat Real Valladolid 2-1 on Friday evening after missing his spot kick against Botafogo in a 0-0 draw earlier this month. This came after the winger had missed five of his last eight penalty attempts but it seems he is not entertaining passing on this responsibility to another squad member. After he fired confidently down the middle against Valladolid, Zaha, who missed a costly penalty in a 1-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest before the World Cup break, sent a message of sorts to manager Patrick Vieira over who should take his side’s next spot kick.
Wilfried Zaha said: “That’s not me, man. I couldn’t do that. What kind of chicken am I?! No, man. I’ll miss [at times] but at the end of the day I’m man enough to stand up and take it again and just have to make sure I score. Today (Friday) I’m happy I did, so the gaffer has a decision now – either he keeps me on or he doesn’t! I think he should after I scored today.”
Palace currently sit 11th in the Premier League with 19 points from their opening 14 games but goals have been hard to come by. They have netted 15 so far and six of them have come from Zaha. Against Valladolid, they had chances to win by a bigger margin but had to settle for a narrow victory. And Zaha thinks it is strange the south London outfit are having profligacy issues in front of goal, despite the attacking threats they have, including Odsonne Edouard, Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise, Jean-Philippe Mateta, and more.
Wilfried Zaha said: “It’s weird considering the talent we have, the dribblers we have. In the final half we just need to be more clinical. I feel like that’s things the gaffer has worked on throughout the time we had away in Turkey. So getting a win today is definitely going to give us confidence going into our first game back. I wasn’t happy with the first-half and definitely made it known when we went inside. But I’m glad we went back out there and changed things up a bit and pressed them properly. I’m happy to end with a win, we deserved it.”
