Crystal Palace star Andros Townsend is hoping that his side enjoy a good run in the Carabao Cup this season after they beat West Brom 3-0 on Tuesday evening, football.london reports.
Townsend scored twice to secure Palace’s place in the next round, with Patrick van Aanholt also getting his name on the scoresheet.
Townsend spoke to Palace TV after the game about the his side’s progress in the competition.
I have always enjoyed this competition and in the first few rounds, you have to make changes, that’s natural.
We were lucky in the fact that we don’t play until Monday [at Bournemouth], so we could play a few more starting XI players, as well as players who need games, so it was good for us.
And if you win one more game, before you know it you are in the deeper rounds and then anything can happen.
It’s a competition where I have been to the final before [with Tottenham in 2014-15], so I know how good a competition it is, and hopefully we can go on a run in it.
Palace manager Roy Hodgson admitted that the cup isn’t the main priority for the club this season but that it’s good to give fringe players some valuable minutes.
It would be very dishonest of me to say that, because if we had done, we would have players like Mamadou Sakho, James Tomkins, Wilfried Zaha, Luka Milivojevic and Macca [James McArthur] here playing.
We can’t say that we see it as a priority, but I do think it is a competition we can take very seriously and it does give others who aren’t playing regularly in the first team in the Premier League a chance to say you should be thinking of me.
And the times we have played in this competition, I think the players can say that if I can do it against Swansea or West Brom, I can do it against teams in the Premier League.
