‘With a vengeance’ – Roy Hodgson reacts as Crystal Palace thrash Leeds 5-1
Crystal Palace boss Roy Hodgson says his side played with a “vengeance” in the second half as they smashed Leeds United 5-1 on Sunday.
Leeds opened the scoring when Patrick Bamford pulled away from Tyrick Mitchell inside the area and planted a header from a Brenden Aaronson corner beyond Sam Johnstone.
The Eagles equalised just before half time. Eberechi Eze’s free-kick was met by Jeffrey Schlupp, who deflected the ball towards goal for Marc Guehi to poke the ball past the onrushing Illan Meslier.
Palace took the lead in the 53rd minute when Michael Olise drew two players towards him on the right-hand side and sent a cross towards the back post for Jordan Ayew. The Ghanaian evaded Luke Ayling and headed past Meslier.
Hodgson’s side extended their lead two minutes later when Eberechi Eze and Olise combined. Eze found Olise, who played a delicately weighted pass beyond two Leeds defenders for the Greenwich-born Eze to latch onto and shoot past Meslier.
Odsonne Edouard added Palace’s fourth in the 69th minute after being played through on a counter-attack by Olise.
Jordan Ayew scored Palace’s fifth when Will Hughes’ shot deflected into the path of the unmarked forward to slot past Meslier.
The South Londoners moved six points clear of the bottom three.
“I’m very pleased,” said Hodgson.
“It didn’t look from the first 20 minutes or so like we were going to dominate as much as we did during the second half.
“The players did well to drag themselves through the first half and establish a little bit more control as the half wore to an end. We were lucky enough to score at that time.
“In the second half, we spoke about things we thought could help us, and the players took that on board with a vengeance.
“We knew if we could defend strongly, keep the ball and get it into those areas, which we did, with the quality of players we had on the field, we could ask a lot of questions of them.
“It was the type of performance we hoped to see from the very start.”
