Crystal Palace boss Roy Hodgson has ruled out Ruben Loftus-Cheek returning to parent club Chelsea in January.

Hodgson is confident there are no clauses for Chelsea to recall the loanee who has hit the headlines in the last week with England.

He said: "I'm not 100% certain what the clause is, I think there probably is one, but I believe it's a clause that will protect Chelsea whereby if we're just taking him on loan never to play him, they can bring him back.

"I believe if he's playing and is involved with us there's no break clause. So at the moment, with the way he's playing I think he can feel and we can feel quite confident that he'll stay with us."

Meanwhile, Hodgson believes Palace will be in a better position in the relegation battle in January.

He continued: "There'll be three teams to go down and each one of those three will at some stage in the season be told 'You are too good to go down'," he said.

"I don't believe in the expression "too good to go down". Three teams will go down, and the three teams that go down will probably be quite good teams, so I don't believe in that.

"There are a lot of candidates to go down. At the moment there's five or six teams hanging around the relegation zone, so they're pretty obvious candidates.

"Who knows? By February it might be a different five or six, or there might be more teams sucked into that way of life. I don't concern myself with it, and certainly don't tell people 'You're too good to go down' because that's insulting the intelligence of fellow professionals.

"All of us know that's a meaningless statement, the type of words people might tell you to cheer you up or keep you going, but they know as well as anyone else that teams will go down this year."