Afterwards Selhurst Park unsuccessfully reached for the excessive notes of Vengaboys, wholeheartedly forgiving their greatest striker since Andy Johnson. “I was delighted for him, I think that’s what he deserves,” stated Glasner of Mateta. “As soon as it was clear he was to stay at Crystal Palace he said ‘OK, I will work very very hard to come back and help the team win and achieve all our goals’.
“I think this is what he showed and he’s now getting back to his top fitness. The Newcastle centre-backs looked very fatigued at the end because they had to work very hard against him and all of the others.”
“Mateta made a difference,” stated a chastened Eddie Howe who has now watched Newcastle throw away 25 factors from profitable positions within the league. “It’s blighted our season, the fact that we haven’t been able to not just consolidate really good passages in games but go on and score more goals and continue to attack.
“I’ve said many times that it is not a tactical instruction we give the players. We don’t want to go 1-0 up and change to a mentality of defending, but we’ve done it so I can’t say it hasn’t happened. Then if you are going to defend we have to defend better than we did.”
That was a good studying of Tino Livramento’s half in Palace’s first aim, lacking his headed clearance to present Mitchell time to regulate. Then Sven Botman’s shirt-pull on Jefferson Lerma was noticed to present Palace a comfortable penalty which sealed the match.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2026/04/12/crystal-palace-newcastle-mateta-howe-penalty-osula-europe/