International Break

After a home draw with West Ham which saw The Hammers come from behind twice to rescue a point, "Big" Sam Allardyce enraged Crystal Palace fans with his post-match comments. Here are a few of Big Sam's words:

On Murray's goal:

"You can see that he's just flicked it on in the hope that one of his players is there."

Wilfried Zaha picked out a pass just above the West Ham defender's outstretched legs to find Murray in space on the edge of the box, Murray turned and shot, scoring his third of the campaign.

On the week's points haul:

"We've lost two in ten but only gained four when we should have had five"

I don't recall there being a possibility to score five points out of two games, you get three for a win and one for a draw. Get your maths right Sammy.

Dougie Freedman offered up his opinion of the match and said that the two sides played very different styles of football; West Ham with the physical, long ball method against Palace's fast paced, energetic style of cutting through teams along the floor.

But of course, Allardyce had to go and make a comment about that on WHUFC's official website, stating that:

"We dominated the Palace game and outplayed the home side so it disappoints me to hear a young manager talking in the way he did about my team"

Big Sam has been in the business a long time and is known to be a good manager. However, his comment indicates he feels that just because Freedman is young, he is naive and wrong.

Big Sam backed up his analysis based on the match statistics that say West Ham had more possession and shots on goal. As anybody with half a brain will tell you, a football match is not won and lost based on shots and possession. It all comes down to taking chances that you've created and playing better football when you have the ball. You can have 80% possession but if you're going to spend the majority of that in your own half then the other team's 20% becomes more effective. 

Also, after a convincing away win against rivals Brighton on the Tuesday before, Palace go into the International Break on the back of two very convincing performances and a good away win. Which will give them a boost of confidence when they return on the 15th, away to Watford in the league.

Other positives to come for this international break are the return of Nathaniel Clyne who has returned to training and will complete the Eagles' dream back four alongside McCarthy, Moxey and either Tunchev, Ramage or Gardner. Owen Garvan is also on the brink of return after his knee injury in training. Kagisho Dikgacoi also looks set to return after his hamstring injury set him out for the long term. The South African is not expected match fitness for another two or three weeks but his progress has been steady and should be comfortable enough to appear in the Carling Cup clash with Southampton on the 25th. Steffen Iversen has returned from his injury but still isn't match fit, hopefully his training over the next 9 days will bring him up to 100%.

With good results but a few injuries to tend to, it will be hard to decided whether the break comes at a good or bad time for Crystal Palace but with the youngsters playing a lot of games recently they'll definitely be happy to have a few extra days off between training sessions. Sean Scannell and Jonathan Williams both signed new contracts a few weeks ago and Wilfried Zaha has been stunning so far this season. Palace fans will be excited to see them back in action at Selhurst park on the 18th when the Eagle's take on Bristol City in the Championship.

The preview of the game against Watford will be available in about a week or so, so please check back for any further updates & thank you for reading.