Everything Graham Potter and Roy Hodgson said after Albion lost to Palace

Graham Potter: "We certainly had some good chances. There's no criticism, from my perspective, of the boys – they gave everything again.

I thought we were on top of the game, the better team. They didn't do too much to get their goal which was disappointing and against the run of play, but that happens in football, we know that.

If you don't score then you leave yourself open for something of an action. We created enough, we did enough in the game to get something from it, and that's why it feels disappointing and it's a sore one for us.

All the games in the league are difficult – nothing changes from that perspective. Last night you saw the bottom team [Norwich] wins against the third-placed team [Leicester].

It's not about looking at which fixtures are supposedly easier, it's focusing on the next game, try to win. That's what we've tried to do and we'll do the same.

It's disappointing because we've lost and we've lost narrowly and we've lost when we've played, actually, quite well. That's life sometimes, as well. We have to accept it, we can't feel sorry for ourselves.

We have to take the fight, we have to show our quality. That's where we're at. The most important stat is how many go in the back of the net and that's where we fell short today. 

Sometimes luck is a commodity that you need and we didn't have too much of that. Lewis Dunk's header has beaten everybody but it's hit Neal Maupay straight in the face, Solly March had a good chance.

We have to keep focused on the positives, keep focused on what we've done well and we have to keep working. Hopefully we can turn that luck, those margins in our favour – that's the challenge.

[On Zaha being accused of spitting at Schelotto] I didn't see anything, I just heard. I didn't see anything at all.

I'd rather us be talking about football, to be honest, rather than an altercation off the pitch. That's always my answer to stuff but these things happen, that's life.

Results-wise things have [slowed down in the second half of the season]. The margins are quite tight – sometimes they go with you, sometimes they don't.

We've had draws when we feel like we could maybe have had a bit more but, again, that's where the work is. That's the challenge of the job, that's the challenge of the Premier League.

We need to keep working, that's the only answer. We will focus on the next game, the next match, try to prepare as best we can and try to win that. That's the only way we know and that's what we'll do.

You can't pre-plan or predict the games you can do well in or not. You just focus on the next game.

I am confident [of avoiding relegation]. I believe in the players, I believe in what we're trying to do. I believe that we've shown enough today to say that we can win football matches.

We need a bit of luck, something to fall our way, I guess, but there are some qualities there that have been good over the last few weeks, even though results haven't been so positive. 

We've fought back from going behind, which shows resilience; we've created chances and shown togetherness, our defensive qualities as well. We just need to pull it all together and then the results come.

Everyone's emotional after a game because you obviously want to win but I think we've played quite well. I don't think it was a bad performance from us, I don't think we deserved to lose, I don't think Crystal Palace were necessarily the better team.

You need luck. It's football – it's not so easy to control these things. We have to stay positive. We know the fight, we know how tough it is in this competition, we know the Premier League is hard. We're humble enough to know that, and then it's about work.

I've not really thought about the coronavirus, to be honest. [To reporter] Is that a cough?

I trust the club to think about these things more than me. I'm just the head coach and I haven't got any major concerns but of course we have to take the advice from the people who know better.

We wanted to try to have width against Crystal Palace. They're compact, they protect the middle, so we wanted to have two ways to attack them from a width perspective and also make it a four v three in midfield. That was the decision.

I thought Glenn could help us at the back end of the game but Solly did okay. I'm happy with Neal. It's not about the individual, it's about the team – whether we can score.

I think we've scored 32 goals this year so far. We've got ten games to go, we need to score more. We can't just rely on one guy to do that.

As a team, we have to be better at creating chances, at creating more chances, conceding fewer chances. That's a team responsibility. Neal needs a bit of luck – it was a great strike against the keeper that goes straight down his throat, that sort of thing. I'm happy with him. 

It's worrying if the opposition are having chance after chance after chance and you're getting penned back and camped in your own half, but that wasn't the case. I think [their goal] was a long ball, a knockdown and a bit of action which, I suppose, can happen.

Clean sheets help us get points, help us win games and it's something that we'll always be working towards having. As always, football is about the two boxes, and today we were unlucky and we fell short.

Roy Hodgson: "It was a good win but it was a hard-fought game, wasn't it? I think both teams can feel satisfied that they really did give their all to try to get the result.

In a game where it was so competitive, on a heavy pitch with the rain, there were challenges to be made and won. I thought both teams did that in a very fair way, really, so the game never really looked like spilling over, for me, as a result of a challenge or foul.

Of course, we had a very good and experienced referee in Martin Atkinson, who's quick to step in if there were any doubts at any time.

We obviously are delighted because we won the game. I can understand that Graham is probably very disappointed that he didn't. If you can see it from a neutral's point of view, which neither Graham nor I can, I think it was a really hard-fought derby game and both teams deserve some credit for that, as do the refereeing trio.

Last year, Jordan Ayew did a fantastic job because he was on loan for the year. We made that loan permanent at the start of the season because we knew what he is, what he could do.

But of course, last year he didn't score many goals and that was something which bothered him and, I suppose, was a factor for us – are we going to get the goals out of him that we need?

We knew what else he'd give us, but is he going to give us goals as well? And that's what he's started to do this year. He's scored a large proportion of our goals and is still contributing to the team in so many other ways.

His contribution without goals is enormous – that work rate, that desire, that constant thorn in the opposing team's defence, and also the fact that when we lose the ball he's so quick to get back and help us defensively, which is something you need. It's helped us to keep our last two clean sheets.

Too late for me now for leap years, isn't it? I don't think I'm going to get any marriage proposals now, unless my wife wants to propose to me again.

Brighton are a good team, there's no doubt about that. They're not an easy team to play against. I think their team and play is better, if you like, than their current position would suggest.

We knew this was going to be a tough game. In the home game, we were fortunate to get a draw in that game because they were definitely the better team on the night. Tonight it was a much more even game – different, obviously, because they had a lot of the ball at the back.

We forced them, if you like, to play those balls more in their own half. We made it difficult for them to get the ball into the final third, which is where they wanted to be. We, of course, played the ball forward much earlier, relying on the front three that we have, who need the ball earlier.

It was a much more even game but we established quite a lot of control, largely because we defended so well.

When you're a Premier League side, when you start the season, the be all and end all is that you're still going to be a Premier League side. When that is your one and only abiding ambition, I don't know it's really necessary to say 'we'll now change our ambitions.'

I haven't gone into a game with Crystal Palace in these three seasons where the players aren't focused, are taking life too easy or going through the motions. That isn't the type of team or players we have.

I'm happy, really, to sit back and expect that every one of these last ten games will be similar to the previous 28 – and then we'll see how many points that brings us.

Of course, we'd like it to bring us up the table and not slide us down. We'll enjoy every victory and make certain that we keep our feet on the ground, that we enjoy the moment. 

We accept the victory with some sort of humility and then we'll start again on Monday to make sure that when Watford come to Selhurst Park, we're ready for them as well.

[On the Zaha incident] I make nothing of it. For me, we've watched 95, 98 minutes of football and you're asking me to make some kind of comment about something that happened in 30, 40 seconds.

I'm just glad that Wilf didn't lose his head, that's important. If that's the worst thing that's going to happen in a derby game of this nature, then I think people are getting away with things quite well.

Scott Dann always does well when he comes in. He faces enormous competition. Last year, our best two players alongside Wilf were, arguably, James Tomkins and Mamadou Sakho during long periods of time, and then they both got injured.

In came Martin Kelly and Scott Dann and we picked up even more points than we'd been doing. Now we've got Mamadou fit, James fit very soon, so of course the competition is ratcheted up all the time.

He must take enormous credit that every time he gets a chance, he deals with it. His performance for the team was important and that was the case with Jordan last year. People would say 'he's working hard but he's not scoring goals.' But we finished in 11th position with our highest ever points tally.

It's not a question of statistics, it's a question of winning football matches. At the end of the day, there's only one statistic that's ever going to count, for you as a player or manager, and that's how many points your team gets and where you finish in the league.

All the other statistics keep the newspapers and Sky Sports going. For us, that's about the end of it. The statistic that interests me is 'did we win or did we lose?'

[On coronavirus] All we can do is carry on, follow our doctors' medical advice and keep ourselves free from the virus. I don't intend to speculate at all about what may or may not happen, going forwards. I'm just happy to prepare the team until the day when someone says to me 'we have a problem here with this virus and you don't need to play.'"

Albion’s under-23s 3-5 Liverpool under-23s

Premier League 2, November 22 2017

Albion were overrun at times here. Against a Liverpool team unbeaten in eight, containing players of the calibre of summer signing Sepp van den Berg and the hotly-tipped Harvey Elliott, they conceded more than twice for only the second time since December 2017.

This was a more convincing defeat than the previous occasion, when they were 3-1 up after 57 minutes before also losing 5-3 to Blackburn in August. Creditably though, Simon Rusk’s side never capitulated, despite how unlikely the eventual two-goal margin seemed at certain points.

Elliott’s eighth-minute penalty had given the side who started the day two points behind Albion the lead, followed up by Isaac Christie-Davies’s close-range strike following a raiding run down the right and into the penalty area by Elijah Dixon-Bonner. Pedro Chirivella, who had earlier crossed for Elliott to almost score with an overhead kick, then rattled the far post with a header from an Elliott cross as Albion clung on.

Taylor Richards, signed from Manchester City in the summer, provided relief by running down the right and showing composure outside the penalty area to spray a pass into the path of Danny Cashman just inside the box on the left, whose sweetly hit shot, audibly pushing air out of the ball, required a routine save from visiting keeper Ben Winterbottom.

That was as close as Albion came in a first-half display lacking fluency. Their task wasn’t helped by a succession of stray passes from promising positions, Peter Gwargis barking a note of frustration after hitting one of them.

At the back, Antef Tsoungui and Jordan Davies showed consummate control and passing ability, although Elliott should have scored when a lofted through ball evaded Albion’s defence and found him inside the penalty area, turning sharply and smashing a low shot towards the far corner that McGill parried behind. The keeper saved well at his other post soon after, Elliott producing a Cruyff-turn pass to find winger Luis Longstaff at an acute angle in front of goal on the left, only to be denied by the keeper’s legs.

Clearly in tune with heavy metal football, Liverpool were succeeding by building from the back with a heavy press, working in variations of 3-3-3-1. Albion, apparently playing 4-4-2, worked energetically to contain - if not resist - them.

There was a hushed roar as Ted Jenks and Elijah Dixon-Bonner competed combatively for a bouncing ball outside the penalty area, before Liverpool’s third provided a reminder of their largely unerring ruthlessness. Christie-Davies whipped a cross from the right onto the head of Longstaff, who glanced a deadly firm header into the far corner of the net.

The outlook looked ominous for Albion three minutes after half-time. Elliott, who at 16 became the youngest Liverpool player to feature in a senior side at Anfield in the EFL Cup win over Arsenal last month, turned beyond the centre circle and cut out two defenders with a first-time pass onto the run of Curtis Jones inside the penalty area on the left. McGill advanced quickly in front of coaching staff Casper Ankergren and Ben Roberts, both watching from the stand, but couldn’t repel Jones’s measured finish.

That put the Reds 4-0 up, and they looked just too good at that point. Jones was full of skill on the left, his long limbs resemblant of Trent Alexander-Arnold, competing with Albion right-back Romaric Yapi, who had to be replaced by Lewis Freestone after picking up what looked like cramp.

Trying to knock this Liverpool team out of their stride appeared akin to attempting to scupper an engine with a paper fork, but Freestone created a goal Albion deserved. Gwargis and Jones had both offered tame crosses before the defender persisted admirably inside the penalty area on the right in a flourish of trickery that created the space for a low cross, tapped in by rangey striker Bojan Radulovic.

Winterbottom rapped his bar in frustration but it was a just reply for Albion, with another to come. Radulovic had a shot cleared off the line at the near post from Gwargis’s right-wing corner, then knocked Van den Berg off the ball on the edge of the Liverpool penalty area. Cashman picked possession up, took a touch inside and fired emphatically past Winterbottom.

Like Albion, the forward had earned that return on his efforts, buzzing hurriedly around Liverpool’s backline for sections of the afternoon. The unpredictable slugfest the game had become suited Albion, although Liverpool still threatened at will. Jones raced down the left twice - first to play a one-two with Varesanovic before McGill saved, then being denied again when he laced a shot against the near post and behind.

Albion responded by going straight to the other end in a style unimaginable during much of the game until then, Cashman drawing a save from Winterbottom.

Raggedly open, the final stages contained umpteen chances. Chirivella again launched an arrowed pass to locate Jones in sight of goal on the left, finishing coolly from the rebound after initially shooting at McGill’s legs.

Ninety-three minutes were on the clock by now, but the last of Albion’s three goals in a wildly entertaining final 17 minutes was to come - Radulovic adding his second, having emerged as a 70th-minute substitute.

Skills and the tutelage of Alexis Sanchez - Chuba Akpom joins Albion from Arsenal as a creator for the Championship finale

Albion have gone for speed, bags of tricks and enthusiasm with the only new addition to their squad. The Chubatron is highly rated to the tune of a £25,000-a-week contract from Arsène Wenger, and he says he’ll play anywhere to rack up the minutes – not least likely, it seems, the left wing, where he’s been occasionally deployed by his parent club during EFL Cup games and in pre-season, when he was at his most prolific.

At 21, Akpom has grown up as an admirer of Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink, Alan Shearer, Patrick Kluivert and the Brazilian Ronaldo, and is experienced at all levels of England and Arsenal’s pretender ranks.

“He’s capable of creating things on his own – he doesn’t rely on chances being created for him,” Gareth Southgate, the England manager, said of Akpom, following a 3-0 win against Kazakhstan 15 months ago, in which he scored on his under-21s debut.

“His work out of possession was very good. He’s a confident player. He’s got ability. He just has to keep progressing.”

Southgate was impressed by Akpom’s on-loan performances at Hull last season, including a debut goal against Huddersfield - who his first appearance for Albion might come against - in what would become a promotion season.

It took him more than two months to score again, and a further eight games to score the only goal of a win against Bolton. All of his league goals were home ones, but his cup goals were all away: one at Accrington and a hat-trick at Bury.

Although he never dropped out of the picture at Hull, Akpom is essentially unproven. The signs are promising, though: Jürgen Klopp wanted to sign Akpom during his reign at Dortmund, and the man he succeeded at Liverpool, Brendan Rodgers, was openly interested in signing him two years ago.

Commitment will be key here. Akpom’s heart seems to have remained very much in north London during his brief, goalless loan spells in 2014 and 2015, when he flitted between training at the Emirates and playing for Brentford, Coventry and Forest.

He has experience of a top-of-the-table promotion push with the Bees. “It was different to what I’ve been used to,” he said, admitting some surprise at the physicality of the lower divisions three years ago.

“Getting the three points is huge at senior level. To be top of the league is such a big thing, and it was really exciting to be part of it all.”

His pedigree, if his goals and assists for Arsenal’s youth and reserve sides are anything to go by, also promises much. In training, he is inspired by Alexis Sanchez. “He makes me want to work a lot harder to reach his level,” he says. “It’s really motivational.

“The Championship is a tough league. You’ve got to have good fitness and be mentally prepared.”

A now-permanently signed Glenn Murray should guide him through the battles of an opening stretch of fixtures where he will need to combine robustness with his undoubted creativity, and he also offers a quicker option upfront if Baldock continues to miss out through injury.

There isn’t tremendous pressure on Akpom to score goals. For club and player, it’s a low-risk signing and, potentially, just the extra striker needed for the run-in.