Trevor: Let's Improve

Trevor Brooking is looking for an improvement on Sunday's draw against Millwall when they take on Crystal Palace in the second London derby of the campaign on Wednesday.

After a bright start, Palace have not won for six league games, although they have conceded very late goals to 'lose' four points against Millwall, with whom they drew, Sunderland and Norwich this season.

But Trevor is more concerned with his side's form right now, and, assessing Sunday, he admits:

"It was a below par performance, however you want to look at it, but I think in the end you can say at least we managed to get a point from it because we didn't play well.

"Conners got a good goal and either side of half time we had a chance; Matt Etherington nearly put us two up when he hit the post but I don't think at any stage during that spell we were playing that well.

"Then we tried to nullify them a little bit because they brought their second striker Harris on and pushed Ifill back into midfield with the 4-4-2.

"But we were too deep and couldn't get up to support so it kept coming back off the two smaller lads up front so we were pegged back too easily.

"David James and Christian Dailly in particular did excellent to help us get a draw but we have to improve on that if we want to continue to challenge near the top.

"There were some below par individual performances then as a unit we were half a yard behind them on the day.

"I thought they had some good individual performances but we have to make sure that doesn't happen and probably on the day there were too many from them.

"We have got to make sure we learn from that and improve because overall we have done okay with the little spell of four wins, got outscrapped at Gillingham and had the comeback against Cardiff before the draw.

"So we need another good performance again against Crystal Palace."

SQUAD: James, Bywater, Lee, Repka, Dailly, Pearce, Connolly, Quinn, Alexandersson, Horlock, Defoe, Etherington, Mellor, Sofiane, Noble, Ferdinand, Garcia, Kilgallon.

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