Roy Hodgson has admitted that Wilfried Zaha is a doubt to start Crystal Palace's Premier League clash against rivals Brighton on Sunday.
Hodgson's side host their rivals at Selhurst Park on Sunday afternoon, hoping to bounce back from a poor showing against Chelsea in their last fixture before the international break.
Hodgson revealed that the likes of Gary Cahill, James Tomkins and Patrick van Aanholt are back in contention for the first time this season - but says that Zaha does have an issue with a groin strain picked up on international duty.
"Not sure yet, but I hope so," Hodgson replied when asked whether Zaha would be fit to take on Brighton.
"To be fair, it was a slip which occurred in the game, which meant that he felt his groin muscle, he's got a strain there.
"But it was scanned and there was no sign of any sort of grade tear in that scan. So it's really a question of if he feels that he's recovered sufficiently.
"It would definitely have kept him out of the second game [for Ivory Coast], that would have been a major risk if he'd have played in that one of tearing the muscle.
"But luckily that's not happened, so we will see again tomorrow and see how he is. But I'm hoping he is gonna put his hand up and declare himself fit to play.
"In an ideal world, you want all of your players available, you want that headache of trying to choose the best team and leaving players out of that team.
"We've not been in that situation for a long, long time. In all of that mini-tournament of nine games [following the Premier League restart], we were struggling to get any XI on the field, let alone how many choices of who should play,
"And even the first couple of games [this season] we didn't have an awful lot of choice. Now all of a sudden, players are coming back.
"We've signed Michy Batshuayi, Eberechi Eze… People like Tomkins, Cahill, Patrick van Aanholt and Mamadou Sakho and Martin Kelly are certainly all fit and raring to go, so it's given me a very different scenario when looking at the team."
