“In the second-half he was spot on with everything,” the manager said in his post-match press conference. “In the first-half we didn’t get enough out of him, and we couldn’t bring him into the game as much as we wanted.
“In the first-half he was a figure on the right but he wasn’t creating chances or showing aggression in his play. In the second-half he got it all right in both defence and attack and he showed what a wonderful player he is.
“I have seen him for 10 days less than I have seen the others. What I make of him is that I think he is an enormous talent – he has got a great possibility to have a wonderful career and a wonderful future. We can only hope we at Crystal Palace can give him that platform.”
Hodgson had praise for his lieutenant at the other end of the pitch, as Sam Johnstone made several crucial interventions on his first Premier League start for the club.
“Sam deserves an awful lot of credit, especially having to battle through injuries and having to sit and watch Vicente Guaita play in front of him,” Hodgson said. “He had a good opportunity to prove what a good goalkeeper he is and he took that.
“We know he is a good player – we see him in training and know his character – and today he produced saves you want your goalkeeper to produce when you are playing away from home and in a relegation battle.”
Four second-half goals completed a remarkable turnaround for Palace, as the Eagles equalled their biggest-ever away win in the Premier League.
“I’m very pleased, obviously,” Hodgson said. “It didn’t look from the first 20 minutes or so that that would be the scoreline and we would dominate as much as we did in the second-half but the players did well to drag themselves through the first-half.
“We established more control as the first-half wore to an end and we managed to score. In the second-half we discussed things to help us and the players took that on board with a vengeance and we saw the performance we wanted to see from the start.”