BY ROB SUTHERLAND

Crystal Palace captain Luka Milivojevic hopes the club will make recruits in January after he witnessed his injury-depleted side succumb to a disappointing 1-0 defeat at Newcastle United on Saturday.

The midfielder has seen the Eagles lose a number of their heavy-hitters in recent weeks – the likes of Scott Dann, Gary Cahill, Joel Ward, Jeffrey Schlupp and Andros Townsend all out.

“We don’t have a deep enough squad and I can say that today, especially,” said Milivojevic. “We had four players from our academy that never played in the Premier League, which shows that we’re in some kind of trouble.

“We have very good chairman, I hope he’s going to find some solution to help us.”

The midfielder revealed that two players had injuries but still featured at St James’ Park.

Milivojevic said: “The problem is when you sacrifice — today we had two players with injuries. We were in doubt about whether they would start and how much they could play.

“We are proud of them. In the end we risked those two players but we didn’t get points.”

Milivojevic was disappointed with the result, especially given Palace’s performance.

The Eagles had a number of chances fall to Wilfried Zaha, Christian Benteke and James McArthur — all of which were missed.

“When you have chances you need to convert them,” said the Serbian international. “Converting chances is part of the quality. And that was just missing a little bit.

“There were three or four very good saves from their goalkeeper, too. He kept them in the match and he saved them.”

The Eagles lost the match to a late Miguel Almiron effort in the 83rd minute.

“In the end, from one small situation, we lost focus and concentration and conceded.”

PICTURE BY KEITH GILLARD

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