Crystal Palace's Zaha reliance worries Hodgson

Roy Hodgson has acknowledged there is a risk that Crystal Palace is becoming too reliant on Wilfried Zaha.

Published : Sep 15, 2018 23:56 IST

Wilfried Zaha celebrates his winner against Huddersfield Town
Wilfried Zaha celebrates his winner against Huddersfield Town
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Wilfried Zaha celebrates his winner against Huddersfield Town

Roy Hodgson says that Crystal Palace must find a way to reduce the goalscoring burden on Wilfried Zaha after the winger's superb strike handed them a 1-0 victory at Huddersfield Town.

Zaha made Huddersfield pay for some wasteful finishing with a moment of class shortly before half-time, getting the better of several Terriers defenders before tucking home past Jonas Lossl.

The Ivory Coast forward now has three league goals this term, with Jeffrey Schlupp the only other Palace player to have found the target, and Hodgson is concerned that the Eagles has an over-reliance on its star man, who sat out the 2-0 defeat to Southampton before the international break with a groin injury.

READ: Huddersfield Town 0 Crystal Palace 1: Zaha stars to down goal-shy Terriers

"This year he has added goals to his game, but we need to start chipping in with others or we will rely on him too much," Hodgson told Sky Sports .

"But, it's nice that he's the matchwinner and it's nice it was such a good goal, one of the better goals of the week."

"He was a constant threat and very close to scoring more than one goal, especially early in the second half when we broke."

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Huddersfield has scored just two goals so far this campaign - both from set-pieces - but it showed more promise on Saturday.

Steve Mounie missed two glorious chances prior to Zaha's winner, while Aaron Mooy struck the woodwork in the second half, and David Wagner was left to rue fine margins not going Huddersfield's way.

"We hit the inside of the post, had deflections that didn't go in our favour. In the past we haven't created the offensive situations, but we added that today," Wagner told the club's official social media channels .

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"We are frustrated, but we can look forward as well. Zaha showed his quality, but for sure we have to defend this situation much better. From our perspective, we could avoid it."

"Sometimes, you don't get what you deserve and that was the case today. That was our best performance of the season so far. We created chances, but didn't take them."

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