CRYSTAL Palace boss Dougie Freedman's weekly column for the Croydon Advertiser

NATURALLY I would have preferred it if we had been able to hold on for the three points against Brighton on Tuesday night but I was pleased with our overall performance and reaction given what had gone on last week.

Having gone out of the Carling Cup in such a heart-breaking manner I was wondering what sort of performance I was going to get from the players as there was always the chance we would see something of a hangover in our play.

I never worry about results because I know that if you put in enough good performances over the season then the results will take care of themselves, but I was wondering our play would be affected by what happened at Cardiff.

As it was I thought the lads were outstanding and put plenty of effort in against a good Brighton side. Yes, at times they got on top of the game, but once we got our goal I thought we looked a very good team and I expected us to go on and win pretty comfortably.

Perhaps we relaxed once we were ahead and took thing a bit easy. It is important that we learn when we get in those positions to go for the throat and let our opposition back in the game.

Certainly it is the sort game we need to be winning regularly if we want to get into the play-offs, and since we didn't it might not be our time to get into the top six this year.

Given we were most people's favourites to go down at the start of the season then I think we have done fantastically well this year, but I want us to keep going and climbing the table.

To do that though we need to be more ruthless at home, and we have been a little short in terms of winning games at Selhurst Park this season drawing too many for a team who want to be in the top six.

I haven't totally put my finger on the reason why yet as I think our performances have been very good in lots of the games we have drawn, although perhaps we could have been more clinical in front of goal.

We are not far away from where we want to be though. And I think if we keep making the progress that we have then we'll get there sooner or later. No one has given up on making the play-offs yet though and I know this team is capable of going on a three or four game winning run. If we do that it will be a springboard to get back in there. I have been around this league and know that if you can go on a special run through March and April there is every chance you will make the play-offs.

That is the challenge facing us but we have the right kind of characters around the place to keep looking forward and I know they will all want to finish as high as possible.

With this in mind it is obviously great news that we were able to keep our best players in the January transfer window and even strengthen our ranks in certain areas. This club is moving in the right direction and it is now vital everyone keeps working hard to make sure we build on what we have already achieved together.