Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson reveals why he made no substitutions in draw with Bournemouth

Roy Hodgson has revealed why he chose not to make any substitutions at Bournemouth as Crystal Palace let in another late goal to drop points.

After Wilfried Zaha’s goal put the Eagles 2-1 up with 15 minutes remaining, Hodgson decided not to make any switches despite Yohan Cabaye clearly running out of energy. Bournemouth sub Josh King then prodded in a 90th minute equaliser to deny Palace two precious points in their fight against relegation.

After the game, furious fans of the south London club – who started the game one place outside the Premier League bottom three and could have moved up two places with a win – questioned on social media why no substitutions were made.

“We’ve got a very limited squad,” Hodgson said afterwards. “We’ve got very limited choices, especially in the forward areas. We have some choice at the back; [Martin] Kelly was on the bench today, Timothy Fosu-Mensah on the bench, Pape Souare on the bench. So we have some choices in the back positions but we don’t have many choices in the midfield and front positions so we’ll have to wait and see which ones are fit next week, and I’ll try then to choose the best team available.”

Hodgson’s only attacking options on the bench at the Vitality Stadium were the South Korean winger Chung-yong Lee and the teenage striker James Daly, who was making his first step up from the under-23s.

Daly, 18, was only called up due to injuries to first choice strikers Christian Benteke and Alexander Sorloth, with long-term absentee Connor Wickham making baby steps in the under-23s last week but nowhere near ready for first-team action.

“Things happen at this club,” said Hodgson. “Who knows what’s going to happen this week. Last week after the Liverpool game I had no idea that Benteke was going to get injured on Thursday and not be available to play and I still believed that Sorloth was going to recover in time to play the game and he didn’t do that either, so who knows next week what team we’ll have out.”

Not for the first time this season Zaha stepped up in Benteke’s absence and was Palace’s talisman, scoring a superb goal which put Hodgson’s side 2-1 up on the 75th minute, despite having what might be considered an off-day for the 25-year-old Ivorian. He was closely marked by Bournemouth and involved in a couple of controversial moments, including a clash with Simon Francis in the box that the Eagles wanted a penalty for.

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“The fact is if you’re playing against Wilf Zaha you can never relax,” said Hodgson on his No11. “You’ve always got to be worried and I thought that he was a constant menace to the Bournemouth defence. I’m certain had I taken him off the field there would have been a collective sigh of relief from the Bournemouth defence.

“I thought he was very disciplined in his teamwork today, I thought both he and [Andros] Townsend did very well playing up front. They hadn’t done it for a length of time and neither of them are natural forwards but we don’t have a centre-forward in the club because both of the ones that possibly could play at centre-forward are injured, so they’ve done an exceptional job.

“The team has done exceptionally well; [James] McArthur was ill last night and had to play coming off his sick bed, Ruben Lotus-Cheek had to play 90 minutes despite the fact he hasn’t got many of those minutes behind him and the reason is because our bench is quite loaded up with defenders; we really do not have attacking midfielders or forwards. So that’s the problem.”

Luka Milivojevic’s excellent free-kick had given Palace the lead at the start of the second half before the Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe brought on Lys Mousset and King, the former equalising just after the hour mark and the latter saving a point late on. It leaves Hodgson’s side still deep in the relegation battle but he believes he has seen enough recently to suggest his team can survive.

He added: “It’s important now the players keeper their belief and keep giving themselves credit for what they’ve been able to do and what they are still doing, and not allow themselves to start feeling a little bit sorry for themselves. Certainly if there’s been any luck going it’s not gone our way. We must not start feeling it’s a little bit unjust that when you play as well as we’ve been playing we’re not getting the three points as a result.

“The thing about performances is you need them to do well over the long term and you need them to survive in this league because you’re not going to survive by hoping desperately that you’ll be lucky enough. You’ve got to be good enough to play against all the teams we play against and give them a very good game.

“At the moment in our situation when you’re that close to a victory after having given in what was in my opinion a very good performance you can’t get away from the frustration and the disappointment that brings. If we could have defended that corner kick I’d have been standing here in a very different frame of mind.”