Roy Hodgson leads his side out for their penultimate game of the season this weekend when they face Cardiff on Saturday.
Palace currently sit in 12th place and are unable to finish inside the top ten this season as picking up maximum points from their remaining two fixtures will leave them on 49 points, one behind 10th-placed Watford.
Speaking ahead of his sides fixture against Cardiff, as cited on South London Press, Hodgson explains his intentions for next season and his summer plan.
I don’t think the differences between the top six or seven or eight teams and the others is that enormous.
Wolves and Watford are good teams, but I don’t think we’re a bad team either. It can just be that stroke of fortune you need which lifts you up or that stroke of misfortune which knocks you down.
The big leap for most clubs in our position at the moment is’ are we going to find a way of breaking into that top six or seven?’, and I would include Everton and possibly even Leicester in that group. If so, what’s needed?
But if you go down from there, it could quite easily be, this was our year t have that success or it was not our year to have that success and it was someone else’s turn.
Hodgson was appointed manager of the Eagles in September 2017 and has steadied the ship ever since, however the boss thinks he has a good squad but will still be looking for new players to improve his current side.
We do have a good 11, there’s no question of that, but there’s also no doubt that all clubs need a bit of fresh blood from time to time, to motivate and to provide the competition for those players and to keep them on their toes.
We, like most of the clubs in our position, will be looking to try and find those players so we start next season at least as well off as we finished it.
One big decision the 71-year-old has to make is to decide, with the club, who they are going to keep on as Palace have a number of players whose contracts are up. Current Palace striker Michy Batshuayi returns to his parent club Chelsea in the summer when his loan deal ends.
Belgium forward Christian Benteke has scored just one goal all season which came the other week against Arsenal and could be on the Eagles’ transfer list, while Alexander Sorloth is due back at the club when the season comes to a close. Hodgson had his say on the contracts of his players:
Batshuayi has not been discussed, but two of our strikers are coming to an end. We’ve got Alexander Sorloth who’s been on loan at Gent and we presume he’s coming back but there will be a lot of things to discuss.
Until such time that a meeting takes place between Steve Parish, Doug Freedman, myself and maybe other members of my coaching staff, there’s no point in me speculating or talking too much about it.
It does seem that the club may be quite strict on who they will keep at the end of the season as they want to build a team capable of battling for the top seven or eight. Hodgson added:
In terms of contracts, that will be discussed with the meeting I have with Steve and Doug. I’m not necessarily aware of every player’s contract situation, for me, it’s a question of are they able to be picked at the weekend.
