Patrick Vieira believes Manchester United are title contenders but the Crystal Palace manager is certain that his team can slow the progress of Erik ten Hag’s side tomorrow evening - if they can rediscover a scoring touch.
Palace have drawn blanks in four of their past five games, with Vieira calling on his forwards to find a “ruthless” streak after they failed to convert numerous chances in Sunday’s 1-0 defeat to Chelsea.
Vieira thinks every other aspect of his team’s recent performances have been good, meaning he is confident of repeating last season’s win over United at Selhurst Park once they find their shooting boots - and subsequently do his former club and league leaders Arsenal a big favour.
“When you look at the last couple of games that they have played, the number of wins that they have and how close they are to the top, I think they will be,” he said of United’s charge.
“It’s a different United [to last season] but what will be important for us is to play like we did Sunday, with a lot of intensity and discipline. At home, in front of our fans, if we play like we did Sunday then we have more chance to win this game.
“We’ll keep working, keep believing in ourselves. The chances are there so I want my players to be more ruthless inside the box and to take those chances.”
Palace, who are sweating on the fitness of centre back Joachim Andersen, are in the hunt for a new goalscorer in the transfer market.
Vieira said that the club has identified a number of targets but admits that getting a deal completed is proving “really complicated and difficult.” Not least when the likes of Chelsea are spending several hundred million on new additions.
The manager believes huge fees such as the £87m Chelsea have paid for Mykhaylo Mudryk is a good thing for the Premier League. But he acknowledges that Palace are operating on a different financial level that means they cannot compete for players of the same calibre.
He added: “What happened with the spending of those teams is good for the football club and good for the Premier League. We have to compete with the quality, ambition, values that we have. We’ll compete. That’s what is important for the football club.
“We know who we are as a football club and what we can achieve in the market. Chelsea are on a different level and we have to accept it. We can be really smart and work in a different way to find the players to fit the way we want to play. Look at the players we’ve brought in, we can still do the same but of course we’re not in the same market.
“It’s not going to make it easy. When a Premier League team goes abroad to try and bring in a player it becomes really difficult because the team will think we have the same money. Of course that makes it more difficult.”
