Crystal Palace boss Frank de Boer accuses West Brom of setting out to injure Wilfried Zaha during bruising pre-season clash in Hong Kong

CRYSTAL PALACE chief Frank de Boer has accused West Brom of setting out to injure Wilfried Zaha.

The Eagles won a feisty pre-season clash 2-0 thanks to goals from Luka Milivojevic and Bakary Sako.

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And Dutch boss De Boer believes Zaha was not protected well enough by the referee, with Allan Nyom in particular putting in some strong challenges.

He said: “I saw some signs of wanting to bring the beauty of the game here and the beauty of the game is not those kind of challenges.

“Of course when it’s a fair challenge for me it’s not a problem but for example with Wilf Zaha they were really looking for him, to injure him and we can’t accept that. No manager can accept that.

“He’s one if the exciting players of the Premier League. I don’t want to think that he’s out for a couple of weeks or months. When its fair, you don’t hear me complain but he might be a little bit unlucky.

“For example, the first challenge I think it was a yellow card and then he knows I can’t do another one.

“Now you give him the permission to do another challenge, so I think if you want to sell the Premier League you have to do the job to avoid these crazy kind of challenges.”

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De Boer was delighted with the former Manchester United winger for keeping his cool as tempers flared in humid Hong Kong.

He added: “I think I have to give Wilf a good compliment because he stayed calm and spoke with his feet and he made a big step in that, so compliments to Wilf.

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"Wilf is a player because of his speed, because of his quality, because of his technical ability sometimes he will look up and go past two or three players.

"He’s so fast he will get fouled a lot. He knows he has to accept as a player and I think he did very well against Liverpool and he did very well today.

"And if referees are looking closely sometimes he could have had two fouls in his favour more or maybe three. It’s like that, we know that."

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