Andre Villas-Boas was pleased with the performance of his Tottenham players following the 1-0 win at Crystal Palace.
It was an important win for AVB’s side to lay down the marker for Champions League football by kicking off the campaign with an away win. In previous years this is the type of match which we would have failed to have won.
AVB also spoke about his delight in Roberto Soldado’s performance, the Spanish striker scored from the penalty spot to open his Premier League tally. He recently said that he wanted to score over 20 goals in the league this season.
AVB said: “Very happy, good performance. There is always a surprise factor to Palace because of the amount of new signings that they’ve brought and the fact that we don’t know them so well, as most of the other teams. So, extremely happy for the performance. We had good chances during all of the 90 minutes, had chances to put the game to bed when we were one-nil up, so, you know, (I) can only be pleased with the performance. We had to hang strong in the last minutes of the game to take it to the final whistle, but I think overall we were the deserved winners.”
“Most of these players arrived at a later stage, particularly Soldado and Paulinho who have had two-three weeks with us only. So we can only see them develop towards the future.”
“You know, to see him so confidently step up and put it to the same side as he scored against Espanyol was important for us. So, good to see him out there, created some chances, good to see the forward coming in with that hungriness for goals that he has. So extremely pleased for the work that he did.”
A reporter asked is this the first match of the post Gareth Bale era and how do you see the team performing without him anyway?, AVB replied: “The (way the) team performed, I just answered your question. The other question that you want to know and everybody else wants to know I’m not going to comment about. The player is injured and he’s not available for selection, and he’s not likely to start in neither the Tsblisi nor the Swansea game (on 22nd and 25th August, respectively).”
Keep up to date with all the latest Tottenham news and opinion by following SpursWeb’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
