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Roy Hodgson ready for tough love approach as he bids to get Crystal Palace back on track

The new Eagles boss made it clear after his side's defeat by Southampton that he won't be looking to take it softly with his psychologically fragile players

Samuel Lovett
Sunday 17 September 2017 22:35 BST
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The Englishman understands the scale of the task he now faces at Palace
The Englishman understands the scale of the task he now faces at Palace

Roy Hodgson may have recently celebrated his 70th birthday - making him the first manager in Premier League history to be appointed as a septuagenarian - but the Englishman has no intention of going easy on his new Crystal Palace players.

After a five-year absence from club management, Hodgson was back in the dugout to oversee his first game in charge at Palace after replacing the ousted Frank de Boer, who lasted exactly 77 days and 450 minutes of competitive football in England.

But despite Hodgson’s penchant for meat-and-potatoes football, Palace still carried the muddled look of a side that had lost its way under De Boer’s failed Dutch revolution, losing 1-0 to Southampton in a dreary display at Selhurst Park.

Steven Davies’ sixth minute winner immediately set the home side on the back foot as they struggled in vain to overturn the deficit, spurning a number of chances throughout the match, in a result that means Palace are now the first club in top-flight history to lose their opening five league games without scoring a single goal.

But the former England manager has made it clear he’s unafraid of implementing the ‘tough love’ approach, and intends to rule with the carrot and the stick as he bids to get the Eagles back on track.

“I just know one thing,” he said after Saturday’s defeat. “We’ve got to do better than we did today in terms of both our defending and attacking, and we've got to make sure we find the players on the field who can do those things.

“In terms of confidence, you've got to be careful. You can't just go round to people saying 'you'll be okay, you'll be fine, that was alright, bad luck' because they need more than that.

“What they have to have is 'look, what we're doing here, or what you're doing there, that's not what we want, that's not good enough, you've got to do more than that, you've got to do this and that and the other'. And we've got to show them that in training and work on it.”

When asked about the psychological pressure Palace now face, and what he intends to do to remedy this, Hodgson replied: “It's bloody hard to stop the players thinking about it. There's no magic wands in that respect. But I think that the coaching staff are happy and myself.

Palace struggled in vain to find an equaliser against Southampton on Saturday

“We're old enough, wise enough and experienced enough to know when we need to put the arm around someone, when we need maybe to think about giving them a little bit of a kick forward. And, finally, as a squad, people have to know what is expected of them and psychologically that can help sometimes. 'He wants this from me, if I do it I’m going to be in his good books and I'm capable of doing that and I know what I'm doing.'”

Hodgson also reiterated that survival “is everything” for the club and stressed that relegation was not an option as he prepares to knuckle down for what will be a testing period for Palace, with Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea their next three opponents.

Christian Benteke failed to make his mark on the game

“I have obviously been told that from the club's point of view it's survival which is everything and that it would be unthinkable that we go down, and we're going to work in the months ahead to make sure it doesn't happen," he added.

“But I still think we will be okay because we'll work to be okay. I think this group of players will follow me and follow the others to make sure we're okay.

“But it won't be by the end of October possibly. It might be quite a long way forward. But don't forget at Fulham we were relegated for all but one of the last seven games of the season. We got out of the relegation zone on the very, very last game of the season with a win at Portsmouth. So we lived with that hanging over our heads for a long, long time.”

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