Crystal Palace vs Brighton: Roy Hodgson 'incensed' with Anthony Knockaert 'lunge' on Luka Milivojevic

Palace lost to their rivals as Knockaert's sensational goal was enough to seal all three points for the visitors

Roy Hodgson said he was “incensed” by Anthony Knockaert’s lunge on Luka Milivojevic in Crystal Palace’s 2-1 defeat against Brighton and Hove Albion, but did not want to let the referee’s decision to excuse a “poor performance”.

Knockaert scored a stunning late goal to seal the win and lift Brighton away from the relegation pack after Milivojevic equalised following Glenn Murray’s early strike. However, the French winger may have considered himself fortunate to be on the pitch after only seeing a yellow card for a lunge on Milivojevic 45 seconds into the match.

The incident that took place in front of the dugouts was seen by referee Craig Pawson and punished with a yellow card.

“We were incensed by the challenge, I thought it looked like a dangerous one I was very pleased to see Luka Milivojevic get to his feet again,” said the Palace manager. “I turned to Cheikhou (Kouyate) to tell him to get warmed-up because I had visions of him not being able to carry on. It was over the top of the ball challenge on a full lunge for as long as I have been in football it’s one of those you get incensed about.

“He committed a bad foul early on I don’t think it was a malicious foul, a winger’s tackle. In a derby game he was trying to show his commitment, it was over the ball of course, it was as bad foul, but I presume the referee gave him the benefit of the doubt on that one.”

Brighton manager Chris Hughton, however, felt that the referee was correct to just show a yellow card. “Anthony’s foot was raised slightly, a little bit more than so for a red card for me absolutely not,” he said. “In the way the game is at the moment, I thought the right decision was a yellow card.”

Knockaert had played fairly poorly before his late goal to win the game and was due to be taken off before he scored.

“I was going to take him off before the goal and I didn’t change my mind,” said the Brighton manager. “Once he’s score there was more reason to take him off. Solly (March) is a different type of player and at that stage, I knew we would have to do more defending.

Palace’s defeat extends their miserable run of home form this season, only Huddersfield have fewer points in front of their own supporters, and Hodgson said a red card may not have changed the outcome.

“It’s a poor performance in the sense we were not able to do enough with the possession we got. Today we were against a packed defence who had the benefit of 15 minutes in the game sitting on a 1-0 lead so I don’t know how the performances can be compared, can we play better? I suppose we can and then you’re talking about individual performances.

“We had 96 minutes to win the game and we weren’t able to do so. I’m not terribly pleased to be discussing an incident in the first 45 seconds. There’s a lot to talk about in the game of football and once again we come down to the referee decisions from now on with VAR it’s meat and drink for you guys because that is all that will be discussed after a game of football, what goes on in the football pitch will be ignored.”

Knockaert went on to win the game for Brighton (Getty Images)

Murray, who scored 30 league goals in Crystal Palace’s promotion season in 2012-13, latched onto Lewis Dunk’s long ball from deep to open the scoring, and Hodgson appeared to blame to wind for playing its part in his side’s early demise because it caused James Tomkins to miss an opportunity to intercept the ball.

“The first one the ball got caught in the wind and then James Tomkins put Murray into a perfect position for him to put them one up despite at that stage they had not being in our penalty area,” he said.

“Over the 90 minutes we worked hard enough and tried hard enough to use our possession to get the result we needed, and we weren’t able to and as a result, it was a disappointing game.

“It’s hard to lose games at home and in derby matches and exceptionally hard when it’s been my team have been pretty much in control with the game. It was a wonderful goal they scored to win the game we can consider ourselves unlucky.”