Roy stretched to very limit
ROY HODGSON says his Crystal Palace side face Burnley today “badly wounded”, with seven first-team regulars out through injury.
Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Andros Townsend, Jeffrey Schlupp, Joel Ward, Mamadou Sakho, Scott Dann, and Jason Puncheon are missing, and manager Hodgson said: “I can have sleepless nights over a 1,001 things, and we are stretched to the limit, but this is another moment in a season when you have to survive and get on with it.
“We don’t have a lot of players capable of making an enormous impact on the 11 who will face Burnley. The task is complicated by injuries, and when you get into the game you just hope you won’t get more like we have at the moment.
“In the next two months we will be involved in a relegation fight, so we need people in not for the sake of it, but who can make us better.” Burnley boss Sean Dyche believes the lure of the Premier League means British managers have less inclination to look for jobs abroad.
Dyche will pit his wits against Hogdson, who had managerial stints in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark and the UAE, and has the utmost respect for his opposite number’s time spent overseas, but says homegrown managers now are less inclined to follow that career path.
Dyche, 46, said: “English football at the moment is very powerful. The Premier League era has enhanced it.
“The knock-on effect is the Championship is very powerful too, so a lot of managers want to be in there, let alone in the Premier League.
“If you’re a British manager, why do you want to go somewhere else when it is happening here?”