Saturday 16 December 2017 17:19, UK
Roy Hodgson said he was "not surprised" by Crystal Palace's emphatic 3-0 win over Leicester on Saturday.
The Eagles picked up their first away win of the Premier League season as well as scoring their first goals on the road at the King Power Stadium, lifting themselves onto 17 points.
It extends their unbeaten run in the league to seven games, winning the last two, and Hodgson said his side have looked like securing such a win for a few weeks.
"Before the game, I was asked about our away form and not scoring goals and I said in the last few performances, we've looked very, very dangerous," he told Sky Sports.
"You think of the chances we've created, we've done that in all our away matches and we've been getting closer and closer. Today, we had the defensive solidity and the two players in front worked incredibly hard.
"I'm delighted with the victory, but I'm not that surprised because we've been threatening to do that for quite a long time now.
"I wouldn't criticise any aspect of our team performance today. We defended well as the clean sheet would suggest and it's our third clean sheet away from home which is a good performance by most standards.
"The thing is we can only enjoy this victory for a short time because then we have to go again and if we don't get a result against Swansea next week, we'll be disappointed again."
After missing a late penalty against Bournemouth last weekend, Christian Benteke scored the opening goal before assisting the second for Wilfried Zaha, and he came in for praise from his manager despite picking up a fifth booking of the season that will see him miss the next game against Swansea.
"I think the crowd, who were fantastic, appreciate not just the goal, but the work rate and the fact that Christian was working so hard in the other aspects of his game as well," Hodgson added.
"They were singing his name which was fantastic because after missing the penalty he perhaps rightly, many people were saying, got some stick from the crowd. But on this occasion they've turned very quickly singing his name and that was fully deserved.
"We're really unlucky, he was the only yellow card for us today and one of two yellow cards against Watford was for Luka Milivojevic [who was suspended against Leicester] so we have not been blessed with where the yellow cards have fallen.
"I don't understand how Benteke, who hardly fouls anybody and is really quite a gentle giant, managed to get five yellow cards. I think he had three before he played for me so I'd like to know where they came from."
