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Patrick Vieira rued Crystal Palace’s failure to score a second goal as Brighton struck at the death to earn a 1-1 draw at Selhurst Park in the Premier League on Monday evening.

Palace took the lead on the stroke of half-time with Wilfried Zaha continuing his fine record against the visitors. Conor Gallagher won the Eagles a spot-kick when Leonard Trossard brought the Chelsea loanee down following a driving run into the penalty area.

Despite usual spot-kick taker Luka Milivojevic being on the pitch, Zaha took responsibility and sent Robert Sanchez the wrong way to make it 1-0 at the break with his eighth goal against the Seagulls.

However, Neal Maupay rescued a point for Brighton at the death with virtually the last kick of the game.

Pascal Gross’ simple ball over the top caught out the Eagles defence and Maupay produced a superb lob over Vicente Guaita to make it 1-1.

Referee Andre Marriner blew for full time soon after before James McArthur and Seagulls keeper Sanchez squared up after the whistle had been blown with the spoils shared in south London.

Speaking after the match, Vieira told BBC Sport: “We are really gutted, really disappointed we knew how difficult it was going to be.

“We played a really good game, we may not have used the ball as well as we wanted to but we stopped them developing in the game. We were consistent and conceding a goal in the last kick of the game, it’s something that is difficult to accept.

“When you’re winning 1-0 anything can still happen. They pushed the tall guys up front and went with the long balls and we defended those situations well.

“We had the chance to score a second goal and when you don’t take those chances it can get back to you and that unfortunately happened to us today.

“We have to look at the positives, the way we played against one of the in-form teams in the league, we created chances, we worked hard, this is positive. But still not enough to win games and we have to keep working.

“I’m disappointed for the players and especially for the fans because they were brilliant tonight. We wanted to give them three points. We are growing as a team and those kind of mistakes will make us reflect on those situations and will make us stronger as a team.”

Gallagher blames loss of concentration

Meanwhile, Palace midfielder Gallagher admitted that the draw was a bitter pill to swallow, adding: “It hurts so much – throughout the whole game we played so well defended brilliantly and worked so hard all of us.

“It feels like a loss to be honest, we had the three points there and then a lack of concentration loses us two points, everyone’s gutted.

“It’s just concentration, a minute left, we’d never blame an individual, it’s a team thing and everyone is gutted.

“There’s stuff to learn from for sure.”

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