In the first part of his pre-match press conference previewing the visit of Nottingham Forest, speaking about Eze, Hodgson said: “He has got a hamstring problem.
"He has had a scan on it and obviously we will have to wait on a second scan, but it is a serious injury. I would prefer not to say [if it take five to six weeks to recover] because I'm optimistic on these things, but the severity of the injury might suggest it’s as long as that.
“But to be fair, the medical team have been working very, very hard to shave off any time on the prognosis of the injury, but it was a blow for us.
“[Michael Olise] is another one we are going to have to wait on. Two of our most creative players, we are going to have to wait on for a period of time, and it could even be a considerable period time.”
Speaking in the embargoed section of his press conference, Hodgson provided further team news updates: "[Joel Ward] has a groin strain.
"[Odsonne Edouard] is fit. He’s available. It was nice to get him back. Before the news with Eze and Ward, we were thinking ‘Good! We’ve had a good result at Man United and we’ve got a couple more players to bring back into the team!'
"But that hasn’t occurred, and now we’ve got a doubt with [Cheick] Doucouré, which won’t help us either, [with his] hamstring.
“[On Jefferson Lerma], it depends when he is allowed to train with the team. It’s a bit like the [Matheus] França situation. At the moment, they’re suggesting that it won’t be at least until the second week of the international break [before he can train].
"I suppose the question for me is: are we going to get him at the start of that week, so we have the chance to do some work, or are they going to spring it on me on the Thursday maybe he’s okay, because that's the tricky one? That, I don’t know.
"With him [Lerma] and [Naouirou] Ahamada, both will be about what transpires during the international break and how quickly we can get them back into a proper training environment. If we can do it early enough, I would say both will be available [after the international break], and I can say the same with Matheus Franca.
"If we can get him into that training environment early enough, we might be able to make him available too."