Hello to you all and welcome back to St. James’ Park for our match against Crystal Palace – a fixture that has been rearranged from that memorable weekend at Wembley last month.
First of all, on behalf of Eddie Howe and his family, I want to pass on a huge thank you for all of your messages of support following Eddie’s illness. While I don’t have an update as such, Eddie has been in great hands and the most important thing is that he comes back when he is feeling 100 per cent ready.
In our 17 years of working together, we’ve only ever been apart on a matchday on two occasions, and both have come during our time here. The first was our first home match against Brentford in 2021, when Ed unfortunately tested positive for Covid-19. The second was Sunday’s win against Manchester United.
When someone you know so well isn’t there, you miss them, and we all missed Eddie’s presence as our manager and leader as we prepared for the game and at the stadium. But we all know the expectations and demands on us, and the players have applied themselves as professionally as they always do.
I have to give the players and staff a lot of credit. Everyone has pulled together and I thought the players did exactly what we wanted them to on Sunday – they delivered a performance and result that Eddie was proud of.
But nobody is going to gift you anything in the Premier League, and so it was our job to tweak things and go out in the second half and get what we felt we deserved.
Our intent was clear from the whistle and we were rewarded when Tino Livramento’s cross was pulled back by Jacob Murphy for Harvey Barnes to smash in from close range.
The third was all of Harvey’s making. It’s one thing for your opponents to make a mistake, but it’s another thing to punish it, and Harvey was ruthless in how he did that.
As was Bruno Guimarães for the fourth. Credit to Joelinton for his header into the right place, and Bruno did a great job of keeping his cool to wrap up the win and push us a step closer towards our overall goal this season.
But we know it was only one step, and we must keep our focus, stick to our principles and deliver what we know we are capable of if we are to take the necessary steps to finish as high up the Premier League table as we possibly can.
A dangerous Crystal Palace team stand in our way tonight. They will know what awaits them under the lights at St. James’ Park, but they have a talented squad and are very well organised by Oliver Glasner, winning 11 of their last 15 matches in all competitions.
We know the levels we will need to reach tonight and across each of our last seven matches of the season, and our aim is clear – to deliver another performance and result that Eddie and all of you can be proud of.
We’ll give it our all, and we thank you for your amazing support.
