The Palace manager and his team faced two matches in four days at opposite ends of the country earlier this month, but, before taking on four games in quick succession, Hodgson said the respite has boosted his team as they prepare for a “difficult” West Ham side.
“I think it’s probably been good for us to get everybody fit, if you like, or ready for the next game,” he said. “The next four games come very, very quickly. It’s been good to get some coaching sessions into everybody because now with these four games we’ll find ourselves in that cycle again of recovering from the last game and preparing for the next one.”
Sticking with the fixture list, Hodgson looked ahead at Palace’s five games in February, when they take on Newcastle United, Leeds United, Burnley, Brighton & Hove Albion and Fulham.
Asked if this might be Palace’s chance to truly move up the table, Hodgson said: “Any time is a good time to move away from the wrong end of the table and lift yourself up.
"But the games we have coming up in the next few weeks are against teams roughly in the same position as us, so you don’t want to be failing in those games during that period because you know afterwards there will be a run of games where it might be a lot harder to envisage picking up points.”
Finally, the Palace manager expressed his views on West Ham, saying he regards them as a formidable opponent led by good management.
He said: “David [Moyes] has done a very good job there, they’ve found a way of playing that suits everyone in their team and they're very, very dangerous. Their confidence is very high but unfortunately when you face good teams, their confidence is often high.
“David and I have been friends for a long time – I’ve always been a great admirer of his work. His teams are always well set up and he knows how to use the players at his club and find a system that uses those players and makes them difficult to beat.
“They do all aspects of the game well. They’re obviously an experienced, disciplined and very professional team. But they defend well and attack well and of course that’s the recipe for having a good team.
“They work very hard, are well organised, their back four and goalkeeper are all experienced. In midfield they have a very talented centre-midfielder defensively and another very talented centre-midfielder who can get through and score.
“Whoever plays them has to understand you’ll play a good team with good quality right the way through - they’ve got no weaknesses you can exploit.
“And they’re in form, which has boosted their confidence because they’ve had such a long spell now without losing important games. So they take to the field thinking: ‘When’s the next win coming up?’ We’ll have to take to the field to disabuse them of that thought.”
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