Marco Silva has hailed Roy Hodgson’s role in Crystal Palace’s Premier League revival as the former Fulham manager prepares to return to Craven Cottage tomorrow.
The veteran ex-England manager made a surprise return to Selhurst Park, succeeding Patrick Vieira at his boyhood club after the Eagles suffered an alarming dip in form in March. Hodgson has steered Palace to steady, overseeing five wins in eight matches and, perhaps a little more surprisingly playing plenty of expensive football – which has seen his new charges score fifteen league goals over the past two months.
Silva told his pre-match press conference this afternoon:
“The new manager impact [has helped Palace] for sure because they are in a good moment. It was a matter of confidence for them to find goals because they have the quality, the talent up front, to punish any team in this league. When they won the first game under Roy and then the second, the confidence came again on different levels and they’re now expressing themselves, you can feel during the matches. The way some of their players are playing right now you can feel they are full of confidence.”
The Fulham head coach knows Palace will pose a serious threat to his hopes of setting a new club record top flight points tally.
“They also have the quality there, (Michael) Olise, Eze, (Wilfried) Zaha, (Odsonne) Edouard, the support they have from the midfielders. With the players they have they can go on, I think they have a lot of individual quality in the attacking line. You can see the young talents who have the experience already in the Premier League to create many problems for the opposition every time. I think it will be a very good game against a good side who will want to keep the same capacity to get points – and we want to do the same.”
Silva hopes his side can finish a fabulous return to the Premier League on a high and credited his squad for their ability to adjust to adversity whatever form it came in during a challenging campaign.
“We showed the capacity to adapt in any moment of the season in what the season demands of ourselves…some moments without our full squad, without some important players for us.”
