Mateta: We gave everything & sacrificed a lot
Jean-Philippe Mateta was proud of his Crystal Palace teammates and staff for giving everything in our 3-0 win over Aston Villa at Villa Park.
The Eagles’ sixth match of an incredibly busy August yielded our finest performance and result of the season to date, inflicting a first home Premier League defeat on Aston Villa in 20 matches – and by an impressive margin to boot.
Mateta got the ball rolling in the first-half with a composed penalty kick after Daichi Kamada was brought down by Marco Bizot inside the box – our No. 14’s first Premier League goal of the season.
And Palace ultimately soared away from our opponents in the second-half as Marc Guéhi’s rocket and Ismaïla Sarr’s towering header helped us secure our first Premier League win of 2025/26 – as well as an unbeaten August, and four clean sheets already this season.
“We are tired, we gave everything!” Mateta panted, speaking to Sky Sports after the full-time whistle."
We have a great group, great staff, a great club
—Jean-Philippe Mateta
He continued: “We’ve played a lot of games. We deserve this win, to finish [for the international break] with this win.
“We work very hard, we have a fantastic manager and fantastic staff. We work with them, we watched the videos [before the match], and we did everything on the pitch – and that's why it's working.
“We sacrificed a lot. We know we have to play all the games. I think we played all the games with [mostly] the same team. We sacrificed for the team, and we know we can depend on each other.
“We have a great group, great staff, a great club – and hopefully we'll keep winning.”
Mateta chose Guéhi’s brilliant curling effort as his pick of the three goals: “I think it's Marc – Marc’s is the best goal! Every game he brings something new for us. He's a fantastic player.”