Alan Pardew admitted he had few complaints with the decision not to award a goal after Dwight Gayle’s early shot came agonisingly close to equalising against Everton.

The Eagles fell behind to Romelu Lukaku’s second minute finish, a strike which proved to be the winning goal in a Selhurst fixture that won’t exactly live long in the memory.

But it could have been a very different encounter had Gayle’s attempt minutes later not been hacked off the line by Phil Jagielka.

It appeared to virtually everyone in the ground the effort had gone all the way across but goal-line technology proved otherwise, leaving Pardew to quickly accept the verdict.

He said: “I actually sensed on the sideline I thought it was in.

“The players’ reaction looked like it was in so whoever invented that goal-line technology needs kicking up the bum.

“To be fair the linesman said to me it is not (a goal) on the watch so I knew straight away.”

Today’s result ended Pardew’s winning run as Palace manager and although unhappy with the outcome, the boss was keen to praise Everton for their defensive resolve. 

“It was frustrating,” explained Pards.

“Again we started poorly, we conceded the first goal and I had a strange feeling today even before the goal went in that the first goal was going to be crucial and it proved to be.

“I thought Everton defended well after that.

“They made it difficult for us, kept the ball, frustrated us and we never really produced a classical moment or a great moment today, which is a shame because we had a lot of technical play, a lot of good play.

“But that final pass, final idea let us down today.”

Pardew also conceded Lukaku’s early strike had been a major setback.

“I think it affected our confidence for a little period.

“You always want to concentrate as the home team on a fine start.

“When you go 1-0 down it is a big blow after two minutes but I think we showed enough today to know that we can change our style a little bit.

“We can control the game, which we had to do – the emphasis was on us to try and play our way through Everton and we got ourselves in great situations. We didn’t quite produce it but on another day we will.”

Marouane Chamakh was forced off midway through the first half with a suspected broken nose following an accidental clash with Seamus Coleman and Pardew singled out the attacker’s departure as a big factor in the final result.

“I think the loss of Cham was significant today,” he said.

“His guile and experience around the box would have been important in the 70 minutes that followed.

“He has got a broken nose we fear, so fingers crossed he doesn’t get my cold. He wasn’t concussed but it was a heavy blow to the nose. He got a cut on it as well.

“I think he will be OK for Leicester. It was just one of those things (the collision).”

With Monday’s transfer deadline fast approaching, Pardew failed to completely rule out further additions in SE25.

He said: “I think we will keep our eye on the market and see where it goes but we’ve got a strong healthy squad.

“It is a shame we didn’t win today because the results elsewhere really went in our favour.

“We could have put ourselves in a great position tonight.

“Having said that we still have a nice cushion and a good healthy squad so it could have been a lot worse Saturday afternoon than it is.”

One man who already has come in is Senegalese defender Pape Souare who joined yesterday from Lille, a club Pardew has previous impressive form of unearthing gems from during his spell in charge at Newcastle.

“We are going to find a full-back who is experienced at left-back, who has played at a good level at Lille.

“It is a club I know well. I’ve taken some good players out of there and hopefully he can follow in the footsteps of Debuchy and Cabaye.

“We’ve sent him home this weekend to get himself together and he will be back here on Tuesday for training and we are looking forward to seeing him.”

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