Asked to elaborate on comments made about south London at the recent Sporting Dinner, Vieira said: “I feel like I’m at home. I’ve enjoyed every single day so far, am surrounded by people who support me and support the players to improve ourselves and working with the people around has been really good. Hopefully it will be like that for a long time.”
Palace sit on 38 points from 33 games, having reached an FA Cup semi-final. They have five matches remaining to close a four-point gap on the top 10, but Vieira said he and the team are not targeting particular places:
“We didn’t have and will still not have a target in our mind. We concentrate on the process of winning football matches and play the best we can. Of course there are games remaining and we have to finish in the best way.
“The way we perform, the results will be decided from that.
“We have to evaluate the season on how we perform collectively, regarding players individually and the attributes they have for the collective.”
Finally, the manager turned his attention to the upcoming Southampton clash, saying he wants to repeat parts of the recent performance against Leeds when facing a challenging side.
“This [Southampton] is a team I like watching play because I believe they have a really good balance between pace, physical and technical. They’ve been doing really well and for us it’s a really good example to follow.
“Against Leeds I think we were ourselves, from the first to the last minute. We played with a lot of tempo, enthusiasm and to win. We competed, were aggressive and I was pleased with the image we showed.
“It wasn’t the case, especially in the first-half against Newcastle but this is what we need to keep. We want to enter every game in the same way and this year it wasn’t the case all the time.”
