IAN Holloway believes Crystal Palace’s recent dip in form inspired them to tonight’s stunning 2-0 victory at Brighton which booked a play-off final date at Wembley.

Two second half goals from England winger Wilfried Zaha secured the Eagles a date with Watford at the national stadium in a fortnight, where both sides will battle it out to get their hands on the mega bucks on offer from being in the Premier League.

Palace had been out of sorts in the latter stages of the campaign, a run which saw the manager come in for some criticism from some supporters.

But the Eagles are now unbeaten in six games after tonight’s impressive success at the home of their fiercest rivals, with Holloway admitting the bad string of results in March and April had forced a rethink at the club.

He explained: “I think we’d learnt from what has been going wrong lately.

“I thought they showed courage, bravery to take on a team that is in as good form as Gus’s boys are.

“They had a swagger about them. It looked pretty awesome their shape and everything, but we kept our discipline tonight.

“No-one made a mistake, maybe only Jonny (Williams) with that finish but even Van Persie needs four goal (chances) to get one believe it or not if you look at the chances, so I told him to cheer up and get on with it.

“But I’m delighted for them. They carried it out to the letter, we had to do it and every one of them and every sub who came on I’m very, very proud of our football club to be able to come here with the atmosphere that this ground created.

“The atmosphere that their supporters created was pretty awesome. I have experienced some of that at Notts Forest (with Blackpool) and everybody wrote us off before I went there, so it was nice having that in the back of my mind.

"But I thought they were terrific and we beat a very, very good team today. Perhaps my supporters won’t like it if I say that but I believe we did.

“They were excellent but we were that little bit better.”

Holloway also admitted he was stunned by who had scored their opener.

“We got the goal at the right time, Wilf got a diving header,” the manager said.

“I believe Wilf is going to be a match winner at the very top, top level and I think he wanted to still keep playing well for us. I thought you could see that today.

“But if you ask those two honestly (Zaha and Bolasie) what have I been saying to them, ‘when one gets half a yard can one of you please cross it and can the other one get inside the full-back’ and what happened?

“I thought it was Kagisho Dikgacoi who scored. I didn’t believe for one minute Wilf would have got in there with a diving header but he just laughed in there ‘gaffer did you see what I j did?’. “I went ‘yep – were you inside the full-back?’ Yep.

“But it was going to take something like that. It was a brilliant cross, a brilliant move and how tight is the Championship?

“How close has this one been this season and how wrong was everybody to write us off because we’d lost a few in a row?

“I’m delighted we’ve come to the hardest place ever and we’ve shown all sorts of strength of character.

“Did I doubt my lads? No I didn’t.

“Did I doubt myself? No. Other people did and who cares? That’s their choice. I’m sure Alex Ferguson used to doubt himself every now and again and then he’d just ride over it and go ‘get lost, I’m going to win’.”

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