Roy Hodgson warns Crystal Palace face summer transfer challenge

Jack Rosser @JackRosser_3 February 2020

Roy Hodgson has warned the Crystal Palace board that they face a battle this summer to overhaul an ageing squad.

The Palace manager had called from the summer for fresh, young faces to be brought in over the January window. In the end he saw only Cenk Tosun, 28, arrive on loan from Everton while Connor Wickham, 26, left the club for Sheffield Wednesday until the end of the season.

A late move for 19-year-old Nathan Ferguson collapsed over a knee injury picked up in his medical while 22-year-old Kyle Walker-Peters plumped to join Southampton over the Eagles.

Hodgson already works with one of the smallest squads in the Premier League, one which has been ravaged by injury over this season and is made of largely of players who were already at the club when he arrived in 2017.

The 72-year-old's squad has not grown and has even aged slightly over the last month. He is yet to put pen to paper on a contract extension with his current deal expiring this summer, and has laid out the task which lies ahead whether he stays or not.

Getty Images

"I think the club is aware of our situation," said Hodgson. "Signing players is not an easy thing to do. Going out and throwing a lot of money around is an easy thing to do and we have lots and lots of examples of it.

"But I think we know as a football club that we need to make more inroads into improving our squad and rejuvenating our squad, and bringing in some fresh faces, because an awful lot of the faces that I work with every day, they were here when I came to the club and I inherited them.

"So everyone is on the same page as far as that’s concerned. And I think now Steve Parish, Doug Freedman and the American owners, they are going to have to do a lot of thinking, alongside myself and the coaching staff about what the best way forward is.

"And in the next transfer window what we are going to try and do is to make sure this team gets stronger and to try and ensure, if we stay up this year and we still have a lot to do to ensure that, if we do stay up this year we are going into the next year with a bit more power and a bit more grease to our elbow."

In Pictures | Crystal Palace vs Sheffield United | 01/02/2020

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Earlier this season chairman Steve Parish told Standard Sport that he was aware the approach to signings needed to change in order to progress the club. Having stuck to form in the January window, they are left with quite the job on their hands come this summer.

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