Crystal Palace boss Oliver Glasner admitted that his side are unbeaten in September because of their desire, rather than the level of their performances.
Earning a hard-fought draw against Manchester United last weekend, Glasner acknowledged that his side were "too cautious" in the first half - the tale of their season.
Palace drastically improved after the break, with Eberechi Eze squandering a chance to take all three points. Albeit Manchester United should have been out of sight after 45 minutes - the Eagles' ability to dig deep kept Glasner's side in the contest.
The South London club are unbeaten in September, however, they are awaiting their first Premier League victory of the season.
The reality is that Crystal Palace have not performed well enough in their five league games to earn three points, a trend they will have to change sooner rather than later.
On Saturday, Palace travel to Goodison Park - a ground they have not won at in ten years - with the Eagles boss confessing that his side must show the same ambition while increasing the quality of their performance.
"Our performances have been okay. We can and we have to improve in parts of the game. What we have always shown is a great character and a great desire to get a point and to come back and not to lose games.
"At the moment, it looks like it's tough to beat us, but it's also tough for us to win the game. This is the next step we want to go and therefore we have to work hard in the training, which we have done this week – the win will come."
Although the Crystal Palace boss is frustrated with the lack of incisive football, he confessed that his side have suffered extreme disruption to their training schedule.
"It is important to have these results, to be unbeaten, but all the results had a little more fight rather than playing style. It is positive that the team could come back against Chelsea and Leicester.
"We played a much better second half against Manchester United. We talked about the Man Utd game this week and when we watched many clips we recognised this is our first common training week with this group.
"The first week, at the end of September – I’ve experienced a lot in football, but I have not experienced having the first complete training week with your squad at the end of September.
"Maybe, we expected too much from how far they are already and we could see against Manchester United that there was a few ambiguities during the game.
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"We showed patterns that we don’t want to show and this is our job to make it clear to the players. We used this first full week together to show this to the players on video and then work on it on the training pitch.
"We’ve increased the training intensity, the demands. We have confidence that we can fight for the results, but it is not just about fighting - that’s a basic. We will need fight at Goodison Park, but we also need to improve our patterns in and out of possession."
In Glasner's 13 games in charge at the end of last season, Palace played some scintillating football - going toe-to-toe with the league's elite. So far this campaign, his side have been unable to emulate that level of performance.
Glasner insists that the same aspirations remain, but the tumultuous training schedule, disruptive international breaks and late transfer business have played a part in Palace's uninspiring start to the season.
"We are very ambitious. We know that overall we had a great transfer window. If we were being critical then we could say that we did our business a bit late, so that means we have to build the group and the style that we want to play a little bit later than we wanted."
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