Palace struggled to match Brentford in the first-half and fell behind to Kevin Schade’s individual moment of brilliance but, pushing high up the pitch during the second period – and with Andersen seeing plenty of the ball in the opposition half – claimed a well-earned point when the defender prodded in a loose ball from a narrow angle.
Hodgson explained: “I thought Joachim Andersen was the outstanding player on our team and maybe the outstanding player on the field today.
“I thought he was a colossus today. He won every header at both ends of the field. He won every challenge he went into. He was a leader figure. He drove the team forward and wasn’t afraid to come more than midway in the opponents’ half, as we saw.
“He was playing balls and spraying it around from about 20 or 25 yards from goal. That was a great responsibility he took there, and it was only fitting he was the one that got the goal, albeit it wasn’t a classic!
“We work on corner runs, but not normally with our centre-backs! The goal, if we were to get an equaliser in the second-half, was going to come about in that way.
“They’d accepted we were moving the ball around much better in midfield and having a bigger share of ball possession. They were dropping around their penalty area, and denying us clear spaces in their area, so something like that was probably going to decide it for us – a cross, or the header which almost bounced for Jordan Ayew.. that was going to be the type of equalising goal we were going to get.”