Crystal Palace boss Neil Warnock wasn’t best pleased with the linesman (sorry, assistant ref) after giving Villa a corner from which we scored. Replays later showed it was a goal kick. hey ho, tough breaks and when you are down it always seems you get kicked a little more!
He did however, in an interview in the Sun, admit that the replay is a good thing for cash strapped Palace financially.
‘It’s probably the best result for everybody – a nice payday. I can’t see anybody whetting their appetite with Reading or West Brom away, can you?’ Adding, ‘We wanted to take them back there, to be honest. It would have been flat if we’d won and then got Reading or West Brom. Let’s get up there then get on with the league. If they have a decent day and we don’t, there’s only one winner. Let’s be honest. But we worked so hard.’
And on Villa, ‘The quality they’ve got, you know that whatever they do we’re in for a hard game. This game was worth £500,000. I can’t see them not putting ours on the telly – who else is there, Stoke, Bolton, Reading?’
Martin O’Neill meanwhile said the draw was a fair result. ‘With five or six minutes left in the game when we were trailing 2-1, I’m pretty pleased to be in the hat for the sixth round. I thought Crystal Palace played with a lot of determination and a lot of spirit, which I expected having seen them play against Wolves and I was hoping we would be able to respond to that. I think, for the most part, we did that. I thought we lost our way a bit in the second half after a pretty sprightly start and Crystal Palace got the goal to make it 2-1. It was a long way back after that.’
He also said that he thought Petrov was ‘magnificent’
‘We’ve got a replay in the week of the League Cup final, which is not ideal but it is preferable to not being in the tie. I think we would have to negotiate Burnley first of all. That is the next task next week. We will see how we come out of that game in terms of injuries and things like that, then I would see.’
He also said that Emile Heskey who was replaced with John Carew at half time came off because of an injury not tactics.
Image gallery from the official site: www.avfc.co.uk
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