Poyet hails Vicente contribution (From The Argus)

Poyet hails Vicente contribution

6:39pm Saturday 10th March 2012 in Albion By Howard Griggs

Gus Poyet hopes Vicente can continue to play a major role in Albion's push for a place in the Championship play-offs.

The former Spain international came off the bench to score twice as the Seagulls beat Portsmouth 2-0 at The Amex to climb to fifth in the table.

It was only Vicente's seventh league appearances since signing last September after a succession of injury problems.

Poyet said: "I'm not going to get tired of saying it, Vicente is the best player at the football club. He is quality because of where he has played and what he has achieved in his career.

"Unfortunately, for different reasons, we couldn't have him week in, week out so a month ago we made a decision to push him to the limit in terms of fitness, which is not nice, but I thought right or wrongly we needed to force him to get to another level and this week in training he was absolutely spectacular.

"I needed to find a place somehow in the squad. Razak and Assulin have been with us a lot but today they were not in the squad because I needed to find a place for Vicente.

"For him today to be able to perform the way he did and score the two goals that ended up winning the game he has got to be proud.

"It has been frustrating for him. He came here to play football. He had options to go to bigger clubs and earn more money but he chose us because he was convinced it was the right place to play football. Let's hope we have him now from the next game to the end of the season."