Pardew has ‘no fears’ about Crystal Palace despite defeat against Chelsea

Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew insists he has “no fears” over his side despite suffering their eighth defeat in 10 matches.

Diego Costa’s header two minutes before half-time saw Chelsea come away with all three points from Selhurst Park.
Palace are now in danger of being sucked in to the relegation zone, having reached the FA Cup final in May.

But Pardew said: “I do think in that group we have good players.

“There’s a good spirit amongst them, and I don’t have any fears for them going forward.

“The thing we needed to address was to score goals, which we’ve put right this part of the season, but started conceding. So we need to get that balance right.”

Pardew felt Palace had given all they could against Chelsea but admitted Antonio Conte’s men – who matched a club-record 11th straight league win – were just too strong at the back.

He said: “They didn’t really give us any chance to get at them as much as we would have liked and probably just did enough offensively to edge it.

“The disappointment of the goal was that we didn’t get enough pressure on the centre half [Cesar Azpilicueta] – then again you don’t expect him to hit a ball of that quality.

“It’s almost the perfect pass to undo us and Costa has the presence to deliver that finish.”