Clyne reveals Vieira’s pre-City instructions

March 16, 2022 7:10 am

Nathaniel Clyne has revealed Patrick Vieira’s instructions to Crystal Palace before their 0-0 draw with Manchester City.

The Palace defender played the full 90 minutes as the south Londoners kept two clean sheets in the same season against City for the first time since 1992/93.

Speaking with the press immediately after the game, Clyne said of the pre-match message: “He [Vieira] just said to play with energy. Get in their faces, don’t make it easy and put our foot in the tackle. When we do have the ball let’s play it quick and play our pace up-front to get into areas where we can make it dangerous.

“I think it worked. Hopefully on another day we could have scored a goal but we take the point and move.”

Elaborating on how he felt Palace managed to keep out Pep Guardiola’s men, Clyne said: “The tactics we lined-up today, we made it difficult for them. We hit them well on the counter-attack and looked dangerous on the counter-attack, especially with the pace we have up-front.

“We defended solid, kept our unit tight and together and, as I said, fully deserved the draw.

“Considering it was against the champions I think we did really well. We defended ever so good and frustrated them to limited chances and I think we fully deserved a draw.”