The Eagles boss saw his side take the lead through Christian Benteke’s 24th minute header, but soon after Sako hobbled off Mark Noble’s penalty made it 1-1 just before the break where the scoreline would remain, but Hodgson admitted that the positivity gained from a good point was dampened by yet another injury.
Speaking in his post-match press conference, he addressed a number of issues, including:
Sako’s injury: “We won’t know how bad it is until tomorrow but my medical staff and sports scientists are very good and have an unerring knack at being right with their initial prognosis, and they aren’t very optimistic – they don’t think it’s very good at all.
“The positivity of getting a point here is offset by paying such a high price if Bakary Sako is now going to miss a large part of the season, simply because we don’t really have the luxury of losing a forward player because we are so short in that area.”
Changes plans for deadline day?: “It makes it a little bit more imperative that we bring some players in because otherwise we’ll have a very thin squad, especially in the forward areas.
“I haven’t spoken to Dougie Freedman or Steve Parish but we’re trying unbelievably hard to try and bring players in, and they’ve been working on that for a period of time. I don’t quite know where they are with the targets that we’ve had on our list, but I’m hoping for some good news in the next 24 hours.”
The game: “There was nothing in it. It was played pretty fairly – James Tomkins caught Hernandez a little late but that was the only tackle in the game that you could say was a slightly dodgy one but it was purely a mistimed challenge.”
The penalty: “I think it was a penalty. From where I was, it looked as if it was a penalty so I didn’t have any qualms about that. It was unfortunate coming as late as it did and that we’d had that long break with Bakary’s injury which disturbed our rhythm and concentration slightly, but there are no excuses and congratulations to West Ham for playing well enough to provoke the penalty.”