Nathaniel Clyne welcomes clean sheet as Crystal Palace settle score with Wolves

Crystal Palace defender Nathaniel Clyne was happy to toast his new deal with three points and a clean sheet against Wolves on Saturday.

Ebere Eze settled a tight contest at a wet Selhurst Park with a fine left-footed strike on the hour mark.

Clyne returned to his boyhood club in October on a short-term contract and put pen to paper on terms until the end of the season on Monday before he made his 11th appearance of the campaign in the 1-0 win.

“It is always good to have a clean sheet,” he told Palace TV. “So very happy and especially as a defender I love getting clean sheets.”

The shut-out was only Palace’s fourth in the Premier League this term, with injuries impacting Roy Hodgson’s ability to pick a settled defence.

Goalkeeper Vicente Guaita played his part with two fine saves to deny Willian Jose in the second half and help the south Londoners move up to 13th ahead of Tuesday’s trip to Newcastle.

It was Palace’s first victory over Wolves in five attempts and helped make up for the FA Cup defeat they suffered at Molineux earlier in the month.

Clyne, who had not played since that 1-0 loss, added: “We definitely owed them one after losing the two games at the beginning of the season – one in the league and getting knocked out of the cup.

“We have played them a few times and it is good to get the win.”

Both sides entered the fixture in poor form, the Eagles with only one success from their last 10 matches in all competitions while Wolves had not won in the league since December 15.

Although the visitors tested Guaita in the second half, the hosts should have added to their tally when Michy Batshuayi and Wilfried Zaha failed to make the most of promising situations.

“When we got the goal they moved from five at the back to four and went for it and we had time and space to get them on the counter-attack,” Clyne said.

“Maybe on another day we could have got two or three goals, but we’ll take the 1-0 and move to the next game.”

Wolves captain Conor Coady was frustrated they were unable to build on the midweek draw with Chelsea.

Boss Nuno Espirito Santo conceded they had to improve fast after an eighth game without a league win and the sentiment was echoed by his skipper.

Coady told the official club website: “We’re in a place we don’t want to be in at the minute.

“It’s tough, we’ve got to come through it. We’re a team and we need to put it right as soon as possible because we’re in a really bad way.

“We’ve come here on the back of an all right result in midweek and thought we could get a bit of good motivation going and we’ve not done that.

“We’ve got beat and I don’t really know what to say. We’ll look at the game and we need to improve because we’re in a bad place.”