Hodgson names three Palace starters for Carabao Cup

Roy Hodgson has pledged to hand starts to a host of Crystal Palace players “crying out for a game” in Tuesday’s Carabao Cup trip to Bristol City.

Defenders James Tomkins and Martin Kelly and goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey are all in line to feature from the off at Ashton Gate.

Hodgson admitted he would be “wrong” not to mix up his selection for the League Cup encounter, after Saturday’s 1-0 Premier League loss at Newcastle.

Asked if he will make changes for Tuesday night, Hodgson replied: “Well, I am hoping to, I’d like to because we have some very, very good players.

“For example, we have two centre-backs who played virtually all of last year in Tomkins and Kelly and at the moment, they’re not getting a game and it would be interesting for me to see them.

“We’ve got a Welsh international goalkeeper on the bench, for example, so there are lots of situations like that where people are crying out for a game, and it would be wrong of me I think not to give them a chance in a midweek game to show what they can do.”

Hodgson insists Palace are unfazed by attempting to balance Premier League and Carabao Cup commitments, despite claiming just one win in nine league encounters.

“I’m hoping we’ll have a strong team going to Bristol,” said Hodgson.

“We are going to go there and try to win the game – it’s not a question of we don’t care about Tuesday because we have got a match on the Saturday.

“At the moment, I think we are capable of doing both of those things. We don’t have an enormous amount of midweek games at Crystal Palace – once we’re out of this cup, we won’t have any more midweek games until such time as we perhaps play in the FA Cup, so we have no reason to start protecting ourselves.

“It’s more a question of maybe giving one or two players who have been champing at the bit to try to get a chance to show what they can do vis-a-vis the ones I am choosing in the first team at the moment to show they they have got the quality we are looking for too.”