Crystal Palace head coach Patrick Vieira says having many of his first-team players missing for their pre-season clash against Leeds United in Australia on Friday is 'not ideal'.
Leeds' game against Crystal Palace in Perth will round off the Whites' pre-season tour of Australia. However, the London side will be missing at least nine first-team players for the tie, with several key personnel absent from Palace's squad for the tour.
Talisman Wilfried Zaha has not travelled, while Marc Guehi, Jeffrey Schlupp, Michael Olise, Eberechi Eze, Will Hughes, Christian Benteke, Nathan Ferguson and Luke Plange will also not feature against Jesse Marsch's side due to various reasons.
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"It is not the ideal situation for a manager to have so many players behind," said Vieira.
"It is important to understand players have stayed behind for different reasons. We are not going to talk about the private situation of players and whether they are vaccinated or not. Some players stayed behind because they needed to have more training and play more games.
"It is difficult. It hasn't allowed us to play games together and work on a tactical basis together. It will take a couple of games before the team starts to gel."
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