Roy Hodgson
Back-to-back wins after going behind on 70 seconds. Pretty good.
Roy Hodgson said “Yeah, very pleased, of course. It was never going to be an easy game, and the opening goal made our task that much harder. We got back well, played some good football and were deservedly leading at half-time. Then in the second half, we kept the lead.”
Gary Cahill at the age of 35, Palace’s oldest ever scorer at the age of 35.
Roy Hodgson said “Well, it was good work down the right-hand side to get the free-kick, I think it was Jordan who provoked the foul. An excellent ball in from Eberechi Eze, a real quality cross from that position. And Gary lost his marker, threw his head at the ball and scored. Very pleased for him, pleased for the team of course. It doesn’t make a difference whether he’s 35, 25 or 15, the important thing is that he did the job.”
What’s the news on the Wilf injury and what kind of issue does that give you now?Roy Hodgson said “Well, there is no news on it. We have to get it assessed first of all, so that will take some time and I don’t think we’ll know the extent of the injury before Thursday. Problems, yes, it does gives us problems because at the moment we’re suffering a spate of injuries. We lost McArthur before the game against Wolves, in the game we lost McCarthy who had taken his place, we lost Joel Ward, we’ve lost Jeff Schlupp, we’ve lost James Tomkins. If we lose Wilf as well, that’s six very, very important players out of our team, and to be frank, it’s not easy for any team to lose six of their regular players.”
You must have been relieved at the end that the Townsend miss didn’t cost you. You had your hands on your head there.
Roy Hodgson said “Chuckles. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, those chances sometimes they are harder chances than they look from the touchline, but I was so convinced that we’d scored. It was a good piece of play, went across the box and Andros was coming in – I was convinced he’d scored. When he didn’t, unfortunately I was unable to control my emotions and keep a poker face.”
Presumably that first half was a bit too open for you as a coach?
Roy Hodgson said “What do you mean?”
It was a very open game, it was end to end…
Roy Hodgson said “No, I didn’t get that impression. I mean, I thought that we passed the ball well in the first half. I thought that the control we had sometimes of the ball in the midfield, the way the full-backs were getting forward and the fact was there was some space, but I didn’t get the feeling that it was particularly open to be perfectly honest, no. The second half was probably, obviously, more close, but that was because they had the ball much more in the second half, getting the ball forward into our back line more often. But I thought first half was a good half from both teams I thought the quality of football… But I didn’t honestly get the impression that we were too open. I just thought that we actually used the space that we created for ourselves, the advantage, from time to time, to good effect.”
You were asked yesterday about the pressure and not facing so much after the win against Wolves. How much less is there now after that win – you’re now 15 points clear of the relegation zone.
Roy Hodgson said “Yeah, there’s less pressure until Monday, I’m afraid. That’s the full answer to it. it’s nice to go into the game against Leeds six points better off than we were last Friday. Because then we were facing Wolves, then a trip to Newcastle and a trip to Leeds and we’re thinking this could be a very, very difficult spell for us. But to get six points from the first two of those games is obviously a relief I suppose – although to suggest and use the world relief suggest that I was feeling undue pressure about the results of those games or not believing that we have the capacity or ability to get results from the games, and that wouldn’t be true. But it’s a nice feeling that, ok, in those two games which were very difficult on paper are now behind us and we’ve taken the maximum points from those games. And as you say, we are much further away today from those teams at the bottom of the table than we were before the game started tonight.”
