HODGSON ONLY HAS EYES FOR THE SURVIVAL FIGHT

CRYSTAL PALACE owner Steve Parish is planning for every eventuality next season.

But boss Roy Hodgson is focusing on nothing but life in the Premier League.

The Eagles are back in the relegation melting pot following a disappointing run of two wins in 10 top-flight games.

Parish (right) knows they are precariously placed and admitted last week, as would any realistic chairman, that he is preparing Palace for whichever division they find themselves in this summer.

Hodgson insisted: “There’s no need for me to be thinking about life in the Championship.

“There will be time enough to contemplate life at the end of the season, and contemplate life in whichever league we find ourselves in. At the moment there’s no need for any of us — certainly not myself or the players — to be giving that a thought. “We’re not business people. Steve Parish was being asked to contemplate a business model for the club regarding a new stadium. “He received probably the obvious question: ‘Will the plans go ahead if the club is not in the Premier League?’ “And he gave what is the obvious answer: ‘My job is to prepare Crystal Palace Football Club in the very, very distant future and nobody can predict what that future holds’.

“At the moment, what the future holds for us is to work very hard in these remaining 10 games to make certain we leave nothing undone that could have been done. We showed against Tottenham last Sunday that we didn’t leave anything undone, we were just beaten by a last-minute goal.” The first of those 10 games will not be easy, with Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United visiting Selhurst Park tomorrow night. Given his history, you might be forgiven for imagining Hodgson (above) is as well equipped to prepare a team in tough conditions as anyone.

Yet the worst snow he encountered was not in Sweden, Norway or Finland.

He said: “I’ve not done a lot of training on snow and ice because the Scandinavian season doesn’t really begin until Easter.

“But I do remember being snowed in a few years ago in Bristol. Not only were games off... we couldn’t get out of the house.”