Symons: Now for play-offs
Crystal Palace defender Kit Symons believes that, having recovered from a less than successful December, his team are now equipped to claim at least a place in the First Division play-offs.
Palace collected just one point from four games at the end of last month but have now won three League matches in succession.
The latest victory - a 3-1 success - came against Gillingham at Selhurst Park last night with Clinton Morrison on target twice and Dougie Freedman adding a late third to put Palace on 47 points, only one point outside the play-off places.
Symons admits Palace went through a disappointing spell last month but believes it helped show how strong they need to be to claim a place in the top six.
"We had a lot of games in a short period of time combined with a lot of injuries and I think that was the reason for our dip in form," he explained today.
"The squad was not really big enough but we have brought in a few new faces and I'd like to think we've come through our bad patch. We've certainly had some encouraging signs recently.
"We're knocking on the door of the play-offs again. What is really encouraging is the way that it is all starting to click together. We talked together last week and said that we had three winnable games in a short space of time.
"We beat Stockport last weekend and have now beaten Gillingham. We're two-thirds of the way there and we'll be going all out against Rotherham this Saturday to make it nine points from those three games."
Palace should have cruised to victory last night after Morrison had given them a second-minute lead.
However, they wasted four clearcutchances and paid the price as Gillingham equalised through Iffy Onuora before the break.
Palace then rode their luck but eventually clinched victory through a second goal from Morrison and a chip by Freedman.
Manager Trevor Francis, meanwhile, is hoping to extend Trevor Benjamin's loan from Leicester which ends this weekend.
"I'll be speaking to Dave Bassett in the next 48 hours to see if we can keep Trevor for another month," said Francis, who dismissed rumours of a move for another Leicester striker, Ade Akinbiyi, as "pure speculation".
Palace v Gillingham - match stats
First Division table
