Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson has spoken of his delight at seeing striker Christian Benteke back amongst the goals, despite losing 3-1 to Everton at Goodison Park.
After trailing at half time to Bernard's smart finish, Palace drew level through Benteke's first goal since last April when his low drive from a tight angle squirmed through the hands of Toffees goalkeeper Jordan Pickford.
After Everton had retaken the lead through Richarlison's brilliant solo goal, Palace went close to drawing level for a second time, once again through Benteke, only for the Belgian international to be foiled excellently by Pickford, who reacted quickly to the striker's header from close range.
And while he was understandably disappointed by his side's third successive Premier League defeat, Hodgson said he was pleased for Benteke.
"That was very good," Hodgson told BT Sport. "Strangely enough, that was a goal that a goalkeeper [Pickford] should have saved and the one that the goalkeeper should have had no chance of saving, he produces a wonder save - and we hit the post in that situation as well.
"Even when we went 2-1 down in the game I thought we showed a lot of initiative to get back in the game and we went very, very close to getting that equaliser, but the longer the game goes on, of course, every time the ball goes out of play, you lose valuable time.
"There was quite a lot of free-kicks that the referee was giving and losing a lot of valuable time for us and in the end we ran out of time to keep the pressure up."
