WILF THE REMAINER
THANKFUL Crystal Palace boss Roy Hodgson is delighted to have kept hold of prized asset Wilfried Zaha.
The highly rated forward opened the scoring and Jeffrey Schlupp put the game to bed as the battling Eagles got their first win in six with a much-needed victory over Burnley.
And having fended off a rumoured £55million bid from Everton for Zaha during the summer, Hodgson said: “We’ve never wanted to lose him, we’ve never wanted that.
“He’s capable of causing problems to any defence anywhere in the world.
“But when a player does exceptionally and there’s lots of clubs after them it’s not that easy to keep hold of them.
“There is a hierarchy in the league and, if you’re Crystal Palace, you have to accept there are bigger, richer and more powerful clubs than you.
“We can’t say to Wilf that we’ll be in the Champions League next year, but I’m happy it didn’t materialise over the summer.
“But who knows, there might come a time again in the future where we’re presented with that situation again.”
Zaha’s clinical first-half strike and substitute Schlupp’s first away league goal for nearly a year did the damage for the Eagles.
England shot-stopper Nick Pope had an afternoon to forget as he let Zaha’s shot sneak in at his near post and then allowed Schlupp’s effort through his legs late on.
Victory saw Hodgson’s battlers climb four places in the table to go level on points with the Clarets.
The Eagles’ opener showed just why Zaha is well thought of with some excellent solo work before firing past the napping Pope.
Substitute Erik Pieters went within a whisker of levelling for the Clarets immediately after the restart, but his left-foot strike crashed into the side netting. Chris Wood also should have levelled matters but somehow the striker blazed over with the goal at his mercy.
And substitute Schlupp made sure of the points for the visitors when he capitalised on Ben Mee’s awful clearance, latching on to the loose ball and firing through Pope’s legs.
Frustrated Clarets boss Sean Dyche said: “There was a lot of effort and commitment but the frustration comes from not taking our chances.
“I’m not despondent with the performance but we just didn’t take our chances. It was just one of those days.
“It was a peculiar game and we had them on the back foot enough to take something.”