'Spate of injuries' - Roy Hodgson on Crystal Palace problems ahead of Leeds United clash and hope for 'tremendous powers of recovery' from star man

Zaha suffered a hamstring injury in Tuesday evening's 2-1 win at Newcastle United that meant the forward had to be substituted for Andros Townsend two minutes before the hour.

Hodgson said Zaha would now be assessed at a time when Palace already had five players sidelined.

Asked about the latest on Zaha at his post-match press conference and what kind of issue that now gave him, Hodgson said as quoted by www.football.london: "Well there is no news on it.

"We have to get it assessed first of all, so that will take some time and I don't think we'll know the extent of the injury before Thursday.

"Problems, yes, it does gives us problems because at the moment we're suffering a spate of injuries.

"We lost McArthur before the game against Wolves, in the game we lost McCarthy who had taken his place, we lost Joel Ward, we've lost Jeff Schlupp, we've lost James Tomkins.

"If we lose Wilf as well, that's six very, very important players out of our team, and to be frank, it's not easy for any team to lose six of their regular players."

Speaking about Zaha's injury to the Evening Standard, Hodgson said: "I’m rather hoping it won’t be a serious one because Wilf has tremendous powers of recovery.

"We'll miss Wilf but there are other forwards who can play, I'm more concerned about central midfield."

Palace left St James' Park with a 2-1 victory on Tuesday thanks to goals from Jairo Riedewald and Gary Cahill.

Goalscorer Jairo Riedewald added: "(Zaha) is of course hard to replace. He is such an important player for us. I hope it is not serious. We definitely need Wilf back in the team ASAP."

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Thank you Laura Collins