Roy Hodgson made some encouraging noises at the press conference to unveil Bjorn Helge Riise this afternoon.

Despite what you might have read on some messageboards, he’s still very keen on Peter Crouch.

We’re talking about a current England international, a top quality player who may just be available, and it’s not a surprise, I suppose, that teams like ourselves, Tottenham and Sunderland are interested in his services.

I’m hoping it will be [possible], yes. But at the same time all deals of this magnitude are fraught with problems. Luckily those problems are being dealt with by the chief executive and I’m being kept totally up to date.

Hodgson is similarly confident of landing Jonathan Greening from West Brom.

I think the offer we’ve made is a very good one to West Bromwich. We think the player would like to stay in the Premiership. We would like to sign him.

But it’s now a question of West Bromwich Albion accepting the offer that we are prepared to make. I’m still very hopeful that that will be the case. But, again, I can’t make any bold statements because he is still a West Bromwich player. But he’s a player we’d very much like to sign and we are prepared to pay what we think is a very good price for him.

And there have been no bids for Brede Hangeland, whom Hodgson is happy to keep at Craven Cottage.

He’s contracted to us, he’s happy with us, and we don’t want to sell him. Our aim and our hope is to keep Brede Hangeland.

Good news all round.