Palace boss won’t point finger at calamity keeper in Watford defeat

Dougie Freedman refused to blame goalkeeper Julian Speroni’s two errors which proved costly as Crystal Palace were hit with a late sucker punch to suffer a 3-2 opening league defeat to Watford.

The Eagles boss instead highlighted poor defending as a whole for the reason the Hornets twice clawed back Owen Garvan’s goals and then saw Udinese loanee Matej Vydra complete the comeback in the fourth minute of injury time.

Speroni spilled and routing catch in the first half that saw Martin Taylor make it 1-1 and then allowed Almen Abdi’s effort squirm through his hands on 88 minutes to square the contest again.

But when asked if the stopper had held his hands up to the mistakes in the dressing room, the Palace boss said: “We don’t work in those kind of ways at this club.

“We don’t put our hands up. We are all in it together and I felt, as a group, we didn’t defend well enough.

“Although we limited them to shots on target, at the end of the day three have got in from five on target.

“That’s disappointing but we don’t do that. We don’t come in and stick our hands up.

“We look at it and try to address it. I just felt as a whole we didn’t defend well enough.”

Freedman conceded that his side didn’t do enough to win but thought they’d managed to eke out the three points.

“We’re 2-1 up with five minutes to go and you think you’ve won the game so that’s maybe what we’ve got to look at.

“I don’t think we deserved to win it but at 2-1 up I felt we’d gotten away with it. It’s just a bitter blow. These things happen in football and it’s certainly about the way you react.

“We will be reacting in a very positive way come Tuesday night.”

As the climate from the hottest day of the year so far played its part in the closing stages, Freedman rule out the soaring temperature as an excuse for his side’s late capitulation.

“The heat in the last ten minutes was the same for both teams, both sets of players felt it,” he said, adding: “The last ten minutes were disappointing but, looking back at the performance, I don’t think we did enough to win the game.

“We probably did enough to get a draw but when it went 2-2 the momentum was with them.”