By John Essien
Crystal Palace Manager, Patrick Viera has named Nigerian target Michael Olise as one of the star players of Saturday’s impressive win over Premier League champions Manchester City.
Olise came off the bench to set up Conor Gallagher’s goal in the 88th after Man City had been reduced to 10-men, as Palace claimed a 2-0 victory at the Etihad Stadium.
The Arsenal legend has now reserved a special praise for the 19-year-old England-born player of Nigerian descent, also eligible to play for Algeria where his mother hails from.
“[Conor is] fantastic. His energy is what we need, what we want, and when he’s on the field he sacrifices himself for the team,” Vieira told the club’s official website.
“He managed to get in the box and score the second goal that got us the win.
“But again, the team performance was fantastic. Wilf [Zaha] from upfront worked really well. We got the ball and that allowed us to be more strong.
“We knew that with [Olise’s] talent and the quality of his one-v-ones going forward, the plan was to try and score that second goal because we knew with the quality that they had they could score at any time.
“That decision went in our favour. It is good because I made some tough decisions – leaving Christian out of the starting XI was really difficult because the last two games I think he was fantastic.
“This shows as well the group of players that we have. It’s a good win, and everybody was really pleased and really happy. But we still need to work on some parts of the game that we can improve a lot,” he added.
Olise has made six appearances so far across all competitions since joining the west London club from championship side, Reading last summer. He has a goal and two assists to his name at the ongoing campaign.
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