‘Technical leader’ – Crystal Palace talisman Wilf Zaha earns more positive words from Patrick Vieira

BY ANDREW MCSTEEN

Crystal Palace boss Patrick Vieira has described Wilfried Zaha as a “technical leader” ahead of tomorrow’s home game against Watford.

The Ivory Coast international scored an injury-time winner at Southampton last Saturday.

Zaha is delivering his best goal return in a season so far, with 13 strikes.

“A technical leader is about on the field,” said Vieira to the South London Press. “The goal that he scored, the free-kicks that he can win for the teams, his technical ability to create something. I believe that in teams, you have players who can make a difference in any kind of moment during the game and Wilfried is one of them.”

Despite the clear talismanic nature of Zaha over the years in SE25, Vieira also singled out two other key attacking threats in his team but warned that it was not just the goalscoring end of the pitch that would be crucial going forward.

“I believe Ebs (Eberechi Eze) and Michael (Olise) can be those kind of players as well,” he added. “The more players that we will have like that, the stronger we will be. But at the same time those players need to understand that there is work to do out of possession.

“If everybody does that well it will allow us to be stronger and defensively to be more competitive.”