Check out our round-up of the manager’s comments below – or, for the manager's pre-match team news, including an update on Michael Olise, click here.
Hodgson on facing Sheffield United, and Palace's principles of play...
Speaking ahead of Crystal Palace's first home Premier League match of 2024, against Sheffield United on Tuesday (30th January, 20:00 GMT), manager Roy Hodgson discussed a range of topics about his side and the Blades'...
On the importance of the game…
“I've never fully understood what the answer to people asking the question ‘is this a must-win game?’ is, because most games you go into, you desperately want to win them – and saying it's a must-win game doesn't win it for you.
“We're only going to win it if we play well and we're better than the opposition.
“They also are in a situation where they need points on the board, even more so than we do, so I'm pretty sure they're looking at it and thinking: ‘this is a game against a team in the same ballpark as we are ourselves, and this is a game that we need to win.’
“As far as I'm concerned, the beauty of football is that games are must-win games because teams need to go out there and get the points on the board that can either move them into a safer position in the league, or, if you're in another part of the league, get you into the Champions League spots, which is also very important.”

On how to defeat Sheffield United…
“You have to play well. You have to stick to your principles.
“We believe in this group. We think they can do well. It's not for me to suddenly make it evident to them that everything's going to collapse around us if we don't win this one, or everything's going to be great now because we've won this one.
“That's something which is your [the press’] domain, and it's very, very different to my domain. My domain is to try and keep people's feet on the ground when it's going well, to try and boost them when it's not going quite so well, and most importantly of all, to make certain that they understand the principles that we try to work on and want to play, if you like.
“We need to see that, and to make sure that they understand that all the talking in the world means nothing. It's what you do when the referee blows his whistle, and you cross the white line, and there's 90 to 100 minutes to play. I think our players do understand that, so nothing changes for me in that respect.
“Whether you're playing a team that comes here and they're bottom of the table, or whether you play Manchester City and Liverpool and the Tottenham's and the Arsenal's when they come here, it doesn't change things enormously. It means you're facing a strong team, a stronger opposition, perhaps.
“But I've got to be very, very careful, and I certainly am much more circumspect about the teams that are so-called easier teams and weaker teams, because I've seen twice recently Sheffield United.
“I saw them having incredible bad luck to lose a home game against Luton where I thought they were clearly the team that was going to win it, and I thought for large, large spells against West Ham, who are having a great season, they caused them all sorts of problems and could quite so easily have won the game.
“So as far as I'm concerned, we're playing a team that can go out against Luton, can go out against Chelsea, can go out against West Ham, and give them very, very tough games and could so easily have won them.
“We know that. Don't underestimate teams anywhere in this league. This league is still a tight league, even if at the moment you could be tempted, I guess, to saw off Sheffield United and Burnley – but you'll never get a coach whose job it is to prepare his team to play Sheffield United and Burnley sawing them off, and people have already sawn off Luton so many times at their peril.”

On the recent focus in training…
“[It was] nothing that depended upon the result of Arsenal. Nothing at all. In fact, for large, periods at Arsenal, I thought we conducted ourselves quite well.
“The two goals were two set plays, which we weren't able to defend. The third goal was when we were trying to get back in, and they scored on the counter-attack from our corner kick. The last two goals, of course, were those things when we made changes, taken people off the field, and we conceded two more.
“So we dismissed that game in terms of ‘this is what we really need to do’. We needed to do, I think, what we always need to do, and that is keep working on our principles, on our way of playing, make certain we don't let anything slip or slide.
“And of course, what we have had the benefit of in this period of time, we've had Olise training with us all that time, which has given us an option to do quite a lot of work on our attacking play, because both he's been there and Eze is now fully fit as well.
"That, to some extent, has not commandeered our thinking, but it has given us things that we thought it would be good to work on now that we've got these players here.”

On the challenge of taking a managerial position mid-season, as in the case of Sheffield United’s Chris Wilder…
“I don't see a vast difference [between that and having a pre-season].
“Obviously the games can get in the way. To some extent the beauty of pre-season is that you do have a few more days and coaching sessions where there's no game coming up, so you're not recovering from a game and maybe recovering from your feelings about the game or preparing for a game.
“But otherwise I would say that your thoughts probably don't vary a great deal, and I suppose it depends on what you prioritise to get your message across. Do you prioritise meetings and individual talks to the players and maybe sessions where you go through what you think should be done tactically on one of those magnetic boards.
“Or whether you're the sort of person who prefers to do the training on the field of play, you think all the messages you need to get across, all the things you need to show them and ask them to do will be done on the field of play. Maybe it’s a combination of the two.
“But you have a bit less time, I guess, because pre-season does give you that nice feel. But pre-season is also a time where often the tactics have to be married to the need to get players physically fit again and give the sports science people the time they need to build up the fitness levels, so it's not as black and white as maybe one could think it is.”
On contrasts between Sheffield United before and after Wilder’s arrival…
“I thought they were quite a dangerous team before [Wilder’s arrival]. I didn't think they had an awful lot of luck.
“I don't think that they deserved some of those defeats which they suffered in that time which left them at the bottom of the table and cost [Paul] Heckingbottom his job.
"But I don't have any thoughts whatsoever on what's changed. I can't remember enough about the Sheffield United team that we prepared to play in the first game of the season compared to this team which we're preparing to play now.
The preparation which we've had now, that's what's freshest in my memory. I've got a pretty good idea of what they're doing, but only someone who's close to Sheffield United could tell you of the particular changes.”