Wilfried Zaha has trained ‘better’ since transfer disappointment, says Crystal Palace boss Roy Hodgson

Moving on | Wilfried Zaha has upped his efforts in training according to Roy Hodgson

Jack Rosser @JackRosser_12 August 2019

Wilfried Zaha has stepped up his efforts in Crystal Palace despite missing out on his move to Everton, according to manager Roy Hodgson.

The Palace forward handed in a late transfer request last week as he looked to force through a move to Marco Silva's side, though he was once more in the home changing room at Selhurst Park as the Toffees visited on the opening weekend of the Premier League.

Hodgson opted to name Zaha, who only returned to training at Copers Cope a week ago, on the bench for the goalless draw and the 26-year-old received an outstanding ovation when he was introduced with just under half an hour to go .

With Everton sitting back following the dismissal of Morgan Schneiderlin, a not yet fully fit Zaha struggled to make a real impact, but not for the want of trying. Hodgson has revealed that his efforts in training since being denied a move have showed early signs of encouragement that there will be no issues following the fallout.

"I sent him home on Thursday, he came back in on Friday, and certainly if you judge those three training sessions his attitude and his application was spot on. Certainly no worse than it has ever been and if anything, better," Hodgson said.

"I think he went out there on Saturday and gave a performance as well."

The reception from the fans will be matched by those in the dressing room too, with Hodgson confident his squad will have no problems with their star man.

"We have such a good dressing room, we have such a lot of good characters and Wilf in my opinion is not a bad character so I’m not really feeling that side of things," said the former England manager.

"But it might take him a day or two to come over his disappointment. I suppose when you are disappointed people don’t necessarily don’t get over it the next day. But I don’t see any long term problems with him coming back, he made himself available and he did what he did when he came on and that answers all questions really for me."