Chelsea vs Crystal Palace: Roy Hodgson surprised by Palace's Premier League run without a win

Roy Hodgson admits he is surprised by Crystal Palace’s recent run of form following their 3-1 defeat to Chelsea f.c, their sixth consecutive Premier League match without a win.

Palace’s latest defeat, their seventh of the season, could have been a different result had the visitors at Stamford Bridge kicked on after Andros Townsend levelled the score following Alavro Morata’s first half goal. Instead, Chelsea restored their lead through Morata’s second strike and Pedro completed the job the make it 3-1.

Hodgson became Palace manager last season in the middle of their run of seven consecutive defeats to start the season and retains that last year’s run was his toughest spell at the club, despite their current predicament.

“The only similarity I see is that last year we was struggling and didn’t really look like getting results,” he said. “This year we’re often after matches left being somewhat surprised we haven’t got a result. There’s not been many teams that have actually outplayed us, that wasn’t the case in my first 10 games last year, we were outplayed on quite a few occasions."

It is not obvious where the points will come for Crystal Palace, who sit 14th in the table after 11 matches, as they host Tottenham then travel to Old Trafford to play Manchester United in their next two league matches on the back of playing Arsenal and Chelsea.

“The teams who are in the second half of the table don’t get that many points against teams in the top half especially at the moment because they are going to be sweeping everything in front of them, we’re aware of that.

“We’ll have to give a good performance, we did last week and I didn’t think our performance was bad by any stretch of the imagination today, all we can do is try and keep giving those performances and hope it keeps going our way and to make certain that we never lose sight of the fact that it doesn’t really matter where you are at Christmas.

"Last season we were very rarely outside the relegation zone and we ended up 11th, could have even been 10th, we missed out on goal difference, there’s an awful lot of football to be played, the one thing you do know as a coach or manager is playing badly and not getting points you don’t really have any confidence of where those points came come from.

"I’m not in that position, we missed chances, yes, we’ve been a little bit unlucky, yes, we don’t have as many points as we should have, yes. But, let’s see where we are after 38 games and the important thing will be to keep going irrespective of what happens in the next two.”

Palace held their own against Arsenal at Selhurst Park and earned a deserved point but could not replicate the same standard against Chelsea. Hodgson’s side came to defend but were too easily breached.

“I’m always disappointed when we lose and it’s happened quite a few times,” said Hodgson. “I can’t be critical of the team’s performance because in the first half we were solid, we were organised but maybe lacking that bit of aggression which we applied at the start of the second half and we started brightly. At 1-1 we had hope but the free-kick saw them take the lead again and to comeback a second time was hard.”