Zaha Didn’t Face Arsenal Because Of Sickness – Vieira

Crystal Palace manager, Patrick Vieira has come out to explain why Wilfried Zaha didn’t feature vs Arsenal. He recently revealed that the Ivorian missed the game as a result of sickness.

According to him, Zaha has been unwell since returning from international duties with Cote d’Ivoire, therefore he had to be excused from the crunch fixture.

Vieira added that Zaha is feeling better now but his health still wasn’t good enough for him to be part of today’s game.

His words, “He came back from international [duty] and he wasn’t feeling well at all.”

“He didn’t have any kind of training with the team, so we decided to leave him at home.”

“He is feeling better, but it wasn’t good enough for him to be part of this one today. We have a squad, we have players who can perform, and players who are waiting to get their chance.”

“Today is about them trying to perform as well as they can for the team.”

“We know his strength and know he’s capable of scoring goals, creating goals.”

“There’s the other part of the game he needs to work on and concentrate on is his work without the ball. How can we be a little more compact?”

“How can he defend better with the rest of the players? But his work ethic has been really good since I’m in this football club. Scoring goals: we know that he is capable of doing it.”

“I think scoring goals will be about how we will perform, the way we want to play. I think midfielders and forwards will create chances.”

“But if we want to score goals we have to play well, have to penetrate in a zone that will allow us to score goals and today [Saturday] we showed we are capable of doing it.”

“However, there’s still a big part we need to keep working [on], keep insisting because this team can still improve a lot.”