Roy Hodgson seeks Crystal Palace long-term improvements after loss

Roy Hodgson insisted he is looking at the long term with Crystal Palace after their miserable start to the season continued with a 5-0 defeat at Manchester City on Saturday.

Palace are bottom of the Premier League after losing their opening six matches without scoring a goal.

They face a tough challenge to turn their fortunes around immediately as they face Manchester United and Chelsea in their next two games.

But Palace boss Hodgson told Sky Sports: "We know the task in hand is difficult, but you make certain you focus on the long term and realise there will come a stage in the season where hopefully, if you get better, the points will come, and hopefully that's where you will catch up the ground you have lost at the beginning.

"There's no point crying over spilt milk that the fixture list has been tough, we knew that, but we have to get there next week at Man Utd and at least start the game working as hard as we did today and hope they don' t have such a good second half where they punished us for any defensive weakness we showed."

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Palace had frustrated City for much of the first half until Leroy Sane broke the deadlock in the 44th minute.

City then upped the tempo after half-time and eased clear, with Raheem Sterling scoring twice and Sergio Aguero and Fabian Delph also netting.

"I am disappointed that the play, both defensively and offensively, that we showed in the first half we couldn't get close to in the second half," said Hodgson.

"A team like Man City are one of the worst you can play against when they are leading and feeling confident and creating chances.

"But it's something you have to live with, there's no words that talk it away, we have to get back to the training ground and work on Monday and prepare for two more enormously tough fixtures against Manchester United and Chelsea and hopefully make certain that we can do a better job over the 90 minutes than we did today, because today, unfortunately, we did it over 44."

Hodgson also confirmed that striker Christan Benteke will miss the match against Manchester United with "ligament damage".

Benteke had to be substituted late on against Man City, and Hodgson said: "He won't be playing in the next game that's for sure. It's something we could do without at the moment."

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