Saturday 22 December 2018 18:41, UK
Roy Hodgson praised the discipline of his Crystal Palace team after they beat champions Manchester City 3-2 at the Etihad Stadium.
Goals from Jeffrey Schlupp, Andros Townsend and Luka Milivojevic, from the penalty spot, gave them a shock victory over Pep Guardiola's side and lifted Palace to 14th in the table.
City dominated possession but Hodgson was thrilled with the way his side worked to make life hard for the home side and stopped them creating too many clear-cut chances.
"I think it was the structure and the discipline the players showed to stick to the game plan," Hodgson told Sky Sports, when asked what had pleased him most about the performance.
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"We realised we were up against a team that is fantastic on the ball. It's very difficult to pressurise them high up the field without opening yourselves up so we allowed their centre-backs to have more time on the ball. But we were very disciplined between our back four and our midfield four to block all the spaces there.
"It was a very concentrated, focused and disciplined performance where we actually took our chances on the counter-attack. We were quite dangerous on the counter-attack, as we guessed we might be with Wilf (Zaha) and Andros (Townsend) and luckily this time it paid off for us."
Palace had to come from behind, with Ilkay Gundogan heading the home side in front after 27 minutes, and Hodgson enjoyed the fight his team showed to respond.
"We knew this was going to be tough," he added. "The important thing was we stood up to Manchester City really well. It was a very good day's work and three fantastic points.
"We rode our luck once with the free-kick that hit the post, but I must say over the 96 minutes the players deserved it and can feel proud of themselves.
"We need to get points from the game against Cardiff as well otherwise we will have wasted these three 'bonus' points which not many people expected us to get today, other than ourselves. We didn't feel ourselves beaten before the game."
