May 14 2013

Ian Holloway

Boss Ian Holloway paid tribute to his Crystal Palace charges after they clinched their place in the Championship play-off final.

Palace's 2-0 triumph over arch rivals Brighton booked a Wembley fixture against Watford with the winners securing a spot in the promised land of the Premier League.

And Holloway was overjoyed as the out-of-sorts Eagles managed to upset the odds and see off in-form Brighton on their home patch thanks to a Wilfried Zaha double.

He said: "Now I think we're feeling much better about ourselves. It's difficult when you come into a club and everything's rosy, I'm not used to it.

"Every one of them burst their heart. They were brave. A couple of weeks ago they didn't feel like that because things weren't going for us. We'd lost our 30-goal talisman [Glenn Murray], everyone wrote us off but you can't do that. If Brighton scored first I don't think I'd be here now [doing the winning interview].

"I think we’d learnt from what has been going wrong lately. I thought they showed courage, bravery to take on a team that is in as good form as Gus’s boys are. They had a swagger about them. It looked pretty awesome their shape and everything, but we kept our discipline.

"No-one made a mistake, maybe only Jonny (Williams) with that finish but even Van Persie needs four goal (chances) to get one believe it or not if you look at the chances, so I told him to cheer up and get on with it. But I’m delighted for them.

"They carried it out to the letter, we had to do it and every one of them and every sub who came on I’m very, very proud of our football club to be able to come here with the atmosphere that this ground created.

"The atmosphere that their supporters created was pretty awesome. I have experienced some of that at Notts Forest (with Blackpool) and everybody wrote us off before I went there, so it was nice having that in the back of my mind.

"But I thought they were terrific and we beat a very, very good team. Perhaps my supporters won’t like it if I say that but I believe we did. They were excellent but we were that little bit better."

Holloway was delighted with Zaha's diving header for the first goal and thrilled both he and Yannick Bolasie followed his instructions.

The boss said: "We got the goal at the right time, Wilf got a diving header. I believe Wilf is going to be a match winner at the very top, top level and I think he wanted to still keep playing well for us. I thought you could see that.

"But if you ask those two honestly (Zaha and Bolasie) what have I been saying to them, ‘when one gets half a yard can one of you please cross it and can the other one get inside the full-back’ and what happened?

"I thought it was Kagisho Dikgacoi who scored. I didn’t believe for one minute Wilf would have got in there with a diving header but he just laughed in there ‘gaffer did you see what I j did?’.

"I went ‘yep – were you inside the full-back?’ Yep. But it was going to take something like that. It was a brilliant cross, a brilliant move and how tight is the Championship?"

Holloway is happy to have proved the critics wrong and says he never doubted his ability as a manager.

He said: "How close has this one been this season and how wrong was everybody to write us off because we’d lost a few in a row?

"I’m delighted we’ve come to the hardest place ever and we’ve shown all sorts of strength of character.

"Did I doubt my lads? No I didn’t. Did I doubt myself? No. Other people did and who cares? That’s their choice.

"I’m sure Alex Ferguson used to doubt himself every now and again and then he’d just ride over it and go ‘get lost, I’m going to win’."