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Football London
Football London
Sport
Kadeem Simmonds

Roy Hodgson says he struggled with same problem Patrick Vieira has at Crystal Palace

Roy Hodgson believes Patrick Vieira's Crystal Palace have the same problems on the pitch as he had - scoring goals.

The Eagles during the 2022/23 campaign have scored 21 goals in 23 games and find themselves 12th in the table, yet only six points above the relegation zone.

The team's top scorer in all competitions is winger WIlfried Zaha with six goals, all coming in the Premier League, while striker Odsonne Edouard is next up with five with only three coming in the league.

READ MORE: Odsonne Edouard tells Crystal Palace how to improve ahead of Liverpool Premier League fixture

Hodgson, who managed the club for four years before Patrick Vieira took over in 2021, never managed to finish in the top half of the table during his stint - 11th in the 2017/18 campaign being their best finish under the former Liverpool and England manager.

And with the club four points off tenth-placed Chelsea with 15 games remaining, Hodgson believes breaking into the top-ten will be hard without two things - investment and putting the ball into the back of the net on a more consistent basis.

“I think midtable for Crystal Palace is always going to be a good result," said Hodgson speaking to William Hill. "It is always going to be hard to take them to the next step without an enormous amount of investment. There has been some investment now which has helped a little bit.

“Unfortunately, they continue to suffer a bit from problems like scoring goals, I had the same problem when I was the manager there. We couldn’t score as many goals as we wanted to and if you are going to finish higher up the table, you count on goals going in and if they don’t, you always have pressure on you to keep a clean sheet.”

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