Hodgson reaction

Roy Hodgson hailed the performance of Christian Benteke as the striker set Crystal Palace on their way to a first away victory of the season with a 3-0 win away at Leicester.

They claimed their first win on the road since a 2-1 win at Liverpool in May thanks to goals from Benteke, Wilfried Zaha and Bakary Sako

Hodgson expressed his satisfaction with his team’s efforts and agreed that it was their best performance of the season.

“I suppose it is because we won”, he said. “I thought we played very well at Tottenham when we lost 1-0, and I was pretty pleased when we lost at Newcastle. Of course, when you’re coming home after a defeat you don’t feel any sense of satisfaction, but today we do.”

Benteke’s goal saw him end a run of 13 games without scoring, and also opened Palace’s account away from home this season, but the Palace boss felt the goals had been coming.

“It’s three clean sheets in a row away from home which is good, and even more importantly we’ve cured the hoodoo of not scoring away from home. That has always been a bit surprising for me as in each of those away games as well as the ones at Brighton and West Brom, the chances were there and we were very close to scoring goals. Today, we did score them.”

The former England manager was delighted by Benteke’s reaction to missing a last minute penalty at home to Bournemouth which would have earned all three points, and to the criticism which came his way as a result.

“That’s great for him”, Hodgson added. “He was very strong and did the right things after the penalty miss and held his hands up. Everyone in the club appreciated that. We know that he is a quality player and the goal he scored is the sort of one he’s going to score, and had it not been for a wondersave by Kasper Schmeichel, he would have scored two today because he got in the positions well, and when he does that he’s a good header of the ball.”

“His record at Aston Villa was one every two games, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he matched that here in the remaining games of the season – that’s what we’re hoping for. Perhaps it’s a confidence thing and all strikers go through periods where the ball doesn’t go in the net for them, and he’s had a lot of injuries this year. Now he’s playing 90 minutes and starting every game, and if we get the type of service that Andros [Townsend] provided, he’ll score goals.”

But the Belgian will not be available for the trip to Swansea next Saturday as he will serve a one-match suspension after picking up a fifth yellow card of the season for a high boot when challenging Vicente Iborra.

“We’ve been a little bit unlucky as we only got one yellow card today and it fell to the guy who was already on four [Benteke], and we got two against Watford when one came to a guy on four [Luka Milivojevic]. I don’t quite know what Benteke does to get yellow cards because he doesn’t seem to commit any fouls to me!”