Roy Hodgson reacts to first defeat since coming back to Crystal Palace

Roy Hodgson suffered his first defeat since returning to Crystal Palace as Wolves won 2-0 at Molineux on Tuesday evening – but the Croydon-born 75-year-old was not disappointed with his side’s performance.

An own goal from Joachim Andersen and a late penalty from Ruben Neves gave Julen Lopetegui’s side all three points.

The Eagles registered 15 shots at Jose Sa’s goal but were unable to find the equaliser during the match.

Palace stayed 12th in the Premier League table and kept the gap to the bottom three to nine points.

“I enjoyed the performance,” admitted Hodgson.

“Of course, you don’t enjoy defeats. But there are defeats when you’re very gloomy after watching your team play. A lot of things might have happened in the game that you don’t like, or you feel really concerned about. 

“You think: ‘How on earth are we going to put this right? Because if this continues, we’re not going to get results.

“That definitely wasn’t the case today – far from it.

“We also got a look at some other players – which was good and important.”

Joachim Andersen was forced off at half-time, with Chris Richards moving to centre-back and Joel Ward coming on at right-back.

“I don’t know,” Hodgson said of the Danish defender’s injury.

“The good thing was that when he started to complain about feeling a slight strian, we took him off straight away – we didn’t persevere with him.

“Hopefully that might have helped us in some way. But we will have to wait and see once the doctors have analysed him. 

“One hopes he will survive it. He’s an important member of our team, and if we’re going to do well in the last five games, I don’t want to lose the Andersen and Guehi partnership, which has been so good throughout.”