Roy Hodgson has spoken candidly about Crystal Palace's failure to trouble Sheffield United as the Eagles lost out at Bramall Lane yesterday (Sunday).
The Eagles slipped to a 1-0 defeat against the newly-promoted Blades, with John Lundstram's goal proving to be the difference between the two sides in Yorkshire.
It was a frustrating afternoon for the Eagles, who barely tested Dean Henderson in the Sheffield United goal, with the Blades seeing out seven minutes of injury time with minimal fuss to record their first win since returning to the top flight.
And Hodgson admitted that the Eagles were not good enough on the day, adding that his players are much better than what they showed against the Blades.
"I didn't think we were good enough. In the first half we looked OK, but in the second half when they scored we were nowhere near good enough," he told the BBC.
"Sometimes people do not play well, they are not robots or chess pieces. We hardly had a strike at goal in the second half and that is inadmissible, the quality of the players we have is far better than we showed in the second half.
“Of course one of the things we have got to do, which we didn’t do particularly well at the start of last season, is to try to start scoring some goals and creating some goal scoring chances.
“If we don’t and the best we can hope for is 0-0 it is going to be very tough for us and had we played a 0-0, it wouldn’t have been a scandalous result, but if we want to win games we have got to start scoring some goals.”
But the Palace boss insisted that there were some positives in the first half, before Sheffield United took the lead early on in the second half.
“We didn’t look great in the second half but in the first half wasn’t such a poor performance; I thought we were more than worth our 0-0 at half-time," he said.
"There were moments in and around their penalty area where I thought we might do some damage by getting the ball in Wilf’s feet and Christian’s feet.
“But second half, especially after the goal, we seemed to lose that composure and to some extent the passing quality we had in the first half and as a result it became fairly easy for Sheffield United to protect their victory and win the match."
