Roy Hodgson has revealed ahead of Palace’s clash with Aston Villa that Christian Benteke and Conor Wickham’s scoring problems are a team issue.
Both forwards failed to net in the Carabao Cup clash with Colchester United, with the Eagles exiting the competition on penalties.
Benteke and Wickham both had chances, but were unable to open their account for this season.
Speaking ahead of the clash with Dean Smith’s Aston Villa, Hodgson said, via Football London:
These are never easy games, because the opponents are always a lot better than they are given credit for, and they work very hard, it is an important occasion for them and there is a scalp on offer.
But I think a lot of players in that game will look and say they didn’t perform as well as they can, and as a result, we didn’t do as well as a team.
But to be fair they were playing with a centre-back making his debut at right-back [Sam Woods] and a central midfield player playing at left-back [Jairo Riedewald], so we were very unbalanced, but I had no option I’m afraid other than to do that.
Both of the forwards will be hoping for a change of fortunes this weekend against Aston Villa, with Benteke hoping to score against his old side.
Read Crystal Palace’s verdict
The strikers both struggled against Colchester, but it has to be said it was a team effort on the night that lost Palace the game.
Would we be even discussing it if Andros Townsend scores his penalty in the shootout?
Confidence is huge for strikers, and Benteke and Wickham are obviously both going through a drought.
It only takes one goal to start a run, as shown by Norwich’s Teemu Pukki, and Palace and Hodgson will be hoping that Benteke and Wickham can get off the mark, and really get going for the Eagles.
