Crystal Palace manager Patrick Vieira believes Conor Gallagher is not yet quite ready for a call up to Gareth Southgate’s England side.
The Chelsea loanee has impressed for Palace this season and was a key player in their first Premier League win of the season against Tottenham last weekend.
Gallagher, who had been at the Chelsea academy since the age of eight, already has two goals to his name in south London from his first four matches.
“This is the biggest problem in our world, when we have one or two performances, we always think that he deserves a national call and I still believe that he needs to be more consistent in his performance,” Vieira said.
“I think he has abilities but I believe – as well – it is too early for the call for him.
“He still has to improve but all the credit to Chelsea because he’s not just a really good footballer, he’s a good human being and he’s a really good person as well.
“We’ve been working with him and talking with him and I think his time will come.
“But first what he needs to do is to perform on a consistent basis to allow him to go higher to the international level, but he needs to perform well week in week out with us, with the under-21s and that will allow him to go to the national team – but at the moment I think his focus has to be with us.
“How can he repeat these kind of performances that he’s had over the last couple of matches.”
Palace travel to Liverpool on Saturday to face Jurgen Klopp’s side who have not been beaten in the Premier League so far this season and Vieira insisted his side need to keep improving.
“Outside of the Spurs game, I think in the last couple of games that we played before, we saw that the team was improving,” the former France international said.
“There’s still a lot to work on. Obviously, we had a really good performance against Spurs but it’s about looking at the side of the games that we can still improve but the positive side about that game is that we were better than the game before that.
“We still need to improve but I always say that, with the squad that we have, we can perform in the Premier League and I think we have a team that allows us to compete in every single game.”
