Crystal Palace performance against West Ham ‘not good enough’ for boss Roy Hodgson

BY SAM SMITH

Roy Hodgson has condemned the performance of his Crystal Palace side as “not good enough” after the South Londoners were defeated 3-2 by West Ham at Selhurst Park.

A Tomas Soucek brace cancelled out Wilfried Zaha’s early goal. Craig Dawson’s header made it 3-1 before substitute Michy Batshuayi struck a late consolation.

Palace have won just one of their last 10 matches in all competitions.

Hodgson said: “It wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t good enough to beat West Ham anyway, they were good and deservedly won the game. It was positive, of course, to get off to such a good start but we didn’t capitalise on it. Far from it in actual fact.

“I didn’t think our first half performance was anywhere near as good as we are capable of, and the players thought that as well.

“Everyone was determined to do better in the second half, which arguably we did. But a set play cost us dearly, the goal from the corner kick giving them a two-goal advantage was going to make any hopes we had of laying siege to their goal very difficult.

“We tried hard and even made a lot of substitutions. We put a lot of attacking players on the field, which funnily enough did lead to a consolation goal right at the end.

“But it also opened us up enormously to counter-attacks. There were lots of situations in the game when I was fearing that West Ham were going to aggravate the score.”