Vieira full of praise for Palace players as his substitutions inspire comeback against Leicester

Crystal Palace boss Patrick Vieira praised his players’ character after they came back from 2-0 down to rescue a point against Leicester City on Sunday.

Vieira’s inspired substitutions saved the game for the Eagles – with both Michael Olise and Jeffrey Schlupp scoring after starting the game on the bench.

But the Frenchman deflected the congratulations from himself after the game, saying his players were the ones to thank for saving a point which had seen unlikely after Kelechi Iheanacho and Jamie Vardy put the Foxes 2-0 up at half-time.

Vieira said: “I think all the credit is to the players because they were ready to come on and bring the energy we needed.

“For them to score the goals is what we needed, what we wanted. I was really pleased.

“The reality is that we went 2-0 down at half-time. Coming back and scoring those two goals against a Leicester team who are fighting for European spots, I'm really pleased.

“We showed character and quality in our play and to get back from 2-0 down is good.”

Palace wasted a number of good positions in the first half, allowing Leicester to take the commanding lead into the break against the run of play.

And Vieira said he wanted his team to be more clinical in front of goal to capitalise on such periods of dominance in the future.

He said: “Obviously, there's some frustration as in the first half we created chances to score and we didn't. On the other side we had mistakes and we got punished.

“The mistakes and the chances that we created and not managing to score goals. That was the frustration of the first half, going to half-time 2-0 down was really harsh on us. We had ourselves to blame as we made the mistakes.”

The former Arsenal man was also full of praise for Olise, the summer signing form Reading who scored the first of Palace’s two goals at Selhurst Park on Sunday.

He said: “We are all really excited with (Olise’s) talent, but at the same time we have to understand he will take time to be a Premier League player.

“He is working really well and hard and he's at a good football club who can support him.

“He needs to keep working. He is doing well in training, he can score goals, which he showed today.”