Hodgson highlighted several of his young players’ displays, including David Ozoh, who replaced injured captain Joel Ward with around half-an-hour on the clock, and summer recruit Matheus França.
“I was really pleased with them,” the manager confirmed. “I thought David Ozoh was excellent.
“The ones that came on in the end, in particular Franca… he had a very good cameo. I’ve been expecting that. I’ve said to him on many occasions ‘when you get your chance ‘you’ll be okay’… Before that, we were reliant on [Jeff] Schlupp and Jaïro Riedewald, who did an excellent job for us.
“We know it doesn’t matter if the team we’re playing against is, on paper, regarded as a stronger team – we know we can get out there and make a good game of it.
“I don’t think we’ll see the best of Crystal Palace until we get players back from injury and we start to field what we think might be our best XI, which we were able to do at the end of last season. That’s a way off, so the fight will have to continue until then, but it’s good to know you’ve got that fight in your team.
“The goals were good goals as far as we’re concerned. [Jean-Philippe] Mateta, who has been waiting for his chance, has grabbed it with both hands. He deserves an awful lot of credit for the way he played today.”
On Ward, Hodgson updated: “We don’t know [how serious it is]. It’s a hamstring [injury] so that’s another one. It’ll just be another injury to compound things for us.
“We thought we were pretty well off for centre-backs, but we lost [Rob] Holding and [James] Tomkins, and if we suddenly lose Joel Ward it will be less still. We need a central midfield player defensively, and [Chris] Richards has been doing that job well. If we have to move him to the back we’ll have a gap there. These are the problems we’ll have to wrestle with.
“But the one thing I’m sure is the fans here today must be very proud of their team. I’m proud of the way they supported us. They were vastly outnumbered of course by the opposition’s fans. It’s going to be a good ride home for us.”
