There were moments when Roy Hodgson simply shook his head and others when he glanced, somewhat wistfully, at the electronic clock on the stadium scoreboard.
As his Crystal Palace players looked increasingly in peril of being submerged by the relentless waves of defence-shredding, high-intensity Newcastle attacks, Hodgson must have longed to fast forward the agonising minutes remaining until the final whistle. “It didn’t work out today,” he said wryly. “We lacked control, we were nowhere near Newcastle’s level.”
