Alan Pardew hailed today’s performance as the best he has seen from his Crystal Palace side despite seeing them beaten 2-1 at home by Arsenal.

The Gunners were in front on eight minutes after Pape Souare was penalised for tripping Danny Welbeck and Santi Cazorla sent Julian Speroni the wrong way from the spot.

However, the penalty award was controversial as the foul appeared to take place just outside of the box.

The advantage was doubled on the stroke of half-time when Welbeck was adjudged to have beaten the offside trap.

His shot was spilled by Speroni into the path of Olivier Giroud, who simply couldn’t miss.

Palace pressed hard to get back into contention but had to wait until deep into stoppage time for substitute Glenn Murray to halve the deficit.

And amazingly the striker almost rescued the unlikeliest of points when his glancing header from Yannick Bolasie’s delivery hit the post with virtually the last kick of the game.

Pardew said: “We’ve took a tactical decision to take the game to Arsenal today.

“The first goal is a mistake by Pape, he should do better and yet the call is tough on us because it looks like the incident happened outside the box, so we find ourselves 1-0 down but we continue with our game plan.

“I was very pleased with our reaction.

“It was probably the best we’ve played since I’ve been manager – and I include the victories in that.”

He added:  “The second goal is offside, and that should be made that call.

“I’ve got (more) of a problem with the second goal than the first.

“It is a minute before half-time and you’ve got to get that call right.

“Still in the second half we continued with the game plan, we didn’t change, we stayed on the front foot, took the game to Arsenal and if the one that hits the post at the end goes in at the end and goes in the keeper’s hands just sums our day up really – it just wasn’t meant to be.

“There was some great team play, some great individual moments and probably the best players were on our team and yet we’ve lost.

“Sometimes that happens but we will have to take that confidence into West Ham because it is now about the next game.”

Pardew was asked again for his thoughts on what would have been a dramatic equaliser from Murray had it crept in.

“It happened from such a fast cross,” the Selhurst supremo replied.

“I actually thought the spin on the ball was going to take the ball into the net when it hit the post and it comes straight into his hands.

“What can I say? It is difficult for me because I’m asking this team to play a bit more than they used to but within that team frame we had some great individual performances.”

And Pards singled out one particular individual for praise after an impressive cameo from the bench

“Yannick Bolasie when he came on couldn’t have done any more than he did in that 30 minute period or whatever it was.

“He was fantastic and if there is one criticism of us today we should have taken the shot earlier, particularly in the first half.

“It was our final moment in that box that needs to improve but we are not far away from being a decent team.”

Follow us on Twitter @NewsShopperSprt