After a goalless first half Everton came out of the traps quickest and both Gylfi Sigurdsson and Oumar Niasse got on the scoresheet within minutes of the restart before Tom Davies added a third to put the game to bed, albeit Luka Milivojevic scored another penalty for Palace to reduce the arrears.
Despite the scoreline, Hodgson found some positives from the afternoon, with the debut of Alexander Sørloth being one of them, and in his post-match press conference, the Palace boss spoke about a number of topics, including:
Post-match mood: “In the first half we did very well but in the second we went 2-0 down fairly early on but we stayed in the game and played hard, so I’m not disappointed with the performance at all. I’m sad we didn’t get a result because I thought at half-time we were more than capable of getting one, but it’s all about goals and Everton got them and we didn’t so they win the game.
“The team did as much as I expected them to do, but it would have been better for me if the first two goals hadn’t come their way because I thought we would have been able to continue what we did in the first half and restrict their chances.”
Missed chances: “It was always going to be tough to come back from 2-0 down, it always is in this league, but I thought we kept playing and tried to come back and I thought that some of our football in that period was more than acceptable, but it didn’t produce the goal, and the third put the game beyond our reach.”
Goals conceded: “The first goal was a long goal kick that got headed up into the air and the second centre-back got caught on the wrong side of Sigurdsson, dived in to challenge and Sigurdsson skipped past him, and Tomkins went for the block and it deflected in. The second was simply we had enough players around the ball in the far corner but it got slipped in and Andros Townsend got caught on the wrong side of his man and allowed the ball to be crossed for them to score the goal.
“To be honest we didn’t lose today because we were lacking players, we lost because we were punished for the defensive mistakes that we made. All goals are defensive mistakes; there isn’t a goal you can’t not trace back to a defensive mistake somewhere down the line, but we lost because of that – not that we were totally outplayed or because Zaha or Sakho didn’t play.”
Relationship with Allardyce: “Sam called me on Thursday evening and he apologised to me and I was happy to accept and receive that apology. As far as I’m concerned that matter belongs to the distant past.”
Alexander Sørloth: “I thought he did well – he hasn’t played for two months because the season in Denmark finishes in mid-December. He’s only played two 45 minute friendlies so I was quite surprised he lasted the pace of the game and I was impressed with his determination and aggression.”