Pierre Sage registered his first home Premier League win on Sunday, over Crystal Palace’s former boss Oliver Glasner and Nottingham Forest. 

It’s been a turbulent start to the season for the French manager, and there is still some way to go before the team are playing cohesive, consistent football in the style he desires, but a 3-1 victory was a good sign that even when his side are struggling in games, the ability is there to go on and win. 

The narrative surrounding the game leant heavily towards Glasner’s return to South London, and Sage was keen to heap praise on his predecessor. 

Here’s everything you might have missed from Sage’s post-match breakdown. 

Palace were poor in the first half. Misplaced passes, consistent errors and unconvincing defending saw the Eagles behind after just three minutes, as Dan Ndoye broke through to score after an underhit header from Anan Khalaili. 

The initial moments of the game went well for Palace despite the goal, but after the opening ten minutes, Forest established control and dominated. 

“We started well without the mistake. We had twenty minutes where we were bad, and Walter made a save with a lot of bravery, he kept us in the game and it was really important in this moment.”

“By moments, I think at the beginning, just after the goal we had a good chance to come back to 1-1, the cross from Khalaili. We changed what we did at the beginning with our build up and we played more direct, played the second ball. We played crazy in small spaces for the 1-1 goal, this team is able to play and we need to be consistent as we were in Leeds but at the end today we were less good than we were in Leeds, but we won, so we have to deal with that.”

Football is a game of fine margins, and Forest came very close to extending their lead on multiple occasions in the first half. Had they done so, the game could have gotten away from Palace, and left Sage’s side with an almost impossible task in the second half. 

“If it was 2-0 to them [at halftime] I think the mentality would have been different.” 

Ndoye also caused a huge amount of issues for Palace throughout the game, and Sage recognised that this was an area of the pitch where Palace lost the battle consistently. 

“It’s not normal to concede as many chances as we did today. We had lots of problems in the area of Ndoye, it was really difficult to deal with that.”

Throughout the season there has been a huge focus on results of course, but also a consideration to the actual progression in terms of the football being played. 

At many times this season, those two things haven’t often tended to occur at once, and that is the next step for Sage and his team. 

“It’s always better to walk and to improve our way of playing when we win, but we have to be honest with what happened on the pitch and I think every player is aware of that.”

“I want to underline one thing, they give their life on the pitch, and sometimes it’s a good way to win.”

The result at Leeds was a much more cohesive performance, and potentially deserving of more than a point. Alternatively, Palace were fortunate not to be behind by more than one goal to Forest, yet came away with the win despite a really poor first half. 

“We have to be more efficient in the play, but we will be able to do that after games and games. We have that, you cannot show it sometimes but we need to be consistent and I think after the international break it’s a good result, and can help us to be good in our future games.”

Whilst the break offered time for rest and recovery, it didn’t necessarily come at the best time for Sage and Palace. The performance at Leeds was excellent, and looked like the most complete tactical game the team had played all season. 

To then have a three week break was a slight momentum killer, and Sage was keen to point out that the remaining games in October offer a perfect chance to really gather momentum. 

“When you win you always have the need to play again, for that we have a game on Thursday, a big game in Lyon, and we have to prepare for it. I think to prepare when you are more quiet in your mindset, without doubt, you can improve quickly, but we know the game was not perfect today [Sunday], we have to accept that.”

The instability of poor performances matching good results and vice versa is problematic, but it will come in time, and if anything the signs should be encouraging for Palace fans. 

“Sometimes we win like this and I think it shows everybody that we could have played better and lost, but this prepares us better. I want the best, a good performance, good result, but for the moment it’s not stable and we have to work on that.”

He'll be hoping that Palace can get both sides right on Thursday, when they face Lyon in the Europa League.