Dean Smith spoke to the media following the dramatic 1-0 loss to Crystal Palace.
His thoughts in full are below.
On the late drama…
I’ve seen it back and I thought it was a really good goal.
Jack Grealish has gone through and made a really good run, gets a nudge in the back, which puts him off balance.
He gets into the box and Gary Cahill comes in with a challenge as he’s laying the ball off to Henri Lansbury.
He goes down and doesn’t even look like he’s looking for a penalty and Henri slots it home.
I have no idea why it’s been chalked off.
On the performance…
I didn’t think we were great today, in all honesty.
I thought we started the game well. We controlled it for the first 20 minutes.
Then in the second half of the first half, I thought we were very passive and they put some pressure on us with a number of balls across the box and balls into the box.
I thought Trez’s first yellow was very harsh but they got it correct with the second yellow. It was a silly one when you’re already on a caution. He’ll learn from that.
Being a numerical disadvantage, it’s tough in this league. There are good players in this league.
We didn’t want to sit back. We wanted to go 4-3-2 and try to create some chances – which we did.
We had to soak up a lot of pressure and unfortunately it told for them.
But the lads kept going and should have got their just rewards at the end.
On the resilience…
We have a group of players who are honest and who lay their bodies on the line as you saw today.
The resilience they show and the determination in that dressing room, I feel for them today because, through no fault of their own, they’re leaving here with no points.
On spells of pressure…
I just thought we could have continued our energy a little bit more in the first half.
I thought we let them into the game.That was the disappointing thing in the first half.
But we put that right at half-time and started the second half well and then we got a silly yellow card and then you’re down to 10 men.
