Roy Hodgson ‘very pleased’ with Crystal Palace performance in goalless draw against Fulham

BY SAM SMITH

Roy Hodgson was pleased with Crystal Palace’s performance in their goalless draw with Fulham – and praised the Cottagers for limiting his side’s attacking threat.

The South Londoners failed to register a shot on target. The only time Fulham goalkeeper Alphonse Areola was tested was when teammate Joachim Andersen diverted Andros Townsend’s cross towards goal.

Palace defended excellently at Selhurst Park, although Fulham missed several chances to win the game and take an important three points in their battle for Premier League safety.

Hodgson said: “I’m very pleased with the performance. It was a very difficult game. We knew that Fulham were in excellent form and that they have some excellent players.

“We knew that there were times when we would perhaps have to dig in and defend very, very well. We had to make sure that our shape was good and that we sealed off as many spaces as we possibly could. We hoped that the game would open out and that we could find some spaces to enable us to use Eberechi Eze as a number 10, but it didn’t work out that way. That’s credit to Fulham.

“It was a game between two teams who knew what they were doing, so I’ve got to be very happy in a game where we did not create enough chances ourselves, and while I’m disappointed that we didn’t win the game, that we did well enough defensively to draw the game.”

Fulham were dominant in the second half. Vicente Guaita made an excellent save to deny a point-blank range header by Josh Maja.

Gary Cahill’s last-ditched challenge prevented Andersen from lashing in from a corner soon after.

“There was one good save from Vicente. He didn’t have many saves to make, but there were some good blocks,” Hodgson, a former Fulham manager, reflected. “Certainly there was an excellent block from Gary Cahill, but the save from Vicente was a match-winning save.”