Palace tasted defeat for the first time of Hodgson’s second spell on Tuesday evening, falling 2-0 at Wolverhampton Wanderers, but the manager has been pleased with his players’ response in training.
“They’ve reacted well because there are defeats, and there are ‘defeats’. There are defeats when you don’t play well enough and you make a lot of errors, and you don’t reach anywhere close to what you’ve tried to reach in the game – those defeats are hard to take.
“Then there are defeats like the one we suffered on Tuesday, when I thought we played very well in the latter part of first-half and all through the second-half, and were unbelievably unlucky not to get anything from the game.
“The reaction required was not perhaps as drastic as it could have been but certainly, if one was needed in training, we’ve seen that, and I feel happy enough going into the next game that Tuesday’s game is now behind us. We’ve taken what we can from it, and we’re ready now to play the next one.”
Hodgson also detailed the challenges he expects Palace to face against David Moyes’ West Ham United outfit, whom they lead by three points in the current Premier League standings.
“[We expect] the same sort of tactical challenge you expect from most teams in the Premier League: they are a good team, they have good players, they are very well coached and managed, and they have a lot of experience as well. They know just as well as we do what playing in the Premier League means.
“It’s not a question of a particular style – it’s trying to deal with the good organisation and quality they have, making sure we are a match for it, and that we in turn can ask them some questions with regard to the play that we put before them.”
As for his opposite number David Moyes, Hodgson noted: "I know David well. We’ve been friends for many, many years, even since the time I was at Udinese in the late 1990s.
"I expect David Moyes' teams to be the sort of teams that have seen him win the award of [LMA] Manager of the Year on three occasions. He wins that award because he manages to get his teams playing in a very organised way, but in a way also that enables them to exert maximum pressure on the opponents and get good results from the work that he does.
"We’re talking about a guy who’s a very good manager, a very good coach. He has an eye for a player and brings good players to his club - first Everton and now West Ham - and as a result, you know nothing’s going to be given to us for free. We'll have to work very hard for everything we're going to achieve in the game, and we must be very careful because he’ll have organised and prepared his team to play against us and counter any threats we might have."
