Crystal Palace manager Sam Allardyce has said that a warm-weather training break in Dubai would have benefited his players ahead of the closing stages of the season.
It was reported earlier this week that the trip had been cancelled due to Palace's 4-0 defeat to Sunderland last weekend, while it had also come in for criticism given the short timeframe ahead of their next fixture with Stoke City.
However, while insisting that the break was never formally booked, Allardyce has claimed that he was fully in favour of taking his players away from the spotlight after similar moves at some of his previous clubs.
The 62-year-old told reporters: "We never booked it, so it wasn't a cancellation. We couldn't get the right flights, we couldn't get the right hotel, because we were late trying to get in there and it's half term. So we said we'd leave it until probably March now before we look where to go. Maybe there's an opportunity to have a winter break after the next round of the FA Cup. So it wasn't cancelled because it wasn't booked.
"If you'd done your research I've had an upturn of fortunes everywhere [with these trips]. I did it at Bolton, I did it at West Ham, I did at Blackpool. It increases the capacity of the players to cope with the pressures of the Premier League.
"A new spirit in terms of how they feel when they come from a winter break, or warm-weather training as we call it, so the research and the science behind it has always been documented by me, so whenever anybody says 'that was a waste of time', well, you can't predict the results [afterwards], but certainly in the physical aspect of the players it increases."
Palace travel to the Potteries on Saturday afternoon looking to secure a win that may be enough to take them out of the relegation zone.
Darren Plant
