Crystal Palace boss Roy Hodgson admits an injury to Scott Dann could force them to seek a centre-half signing in January.

Mamadou Sakho is already out with a calf strain while Jason Puncheon yesterday joined Joel Ward on a lengthening injury list.

“We are massively stretched," admitted Hodgson. “Scott Dann's injury doesn't look good - it's a serious knee injury. How serious it'll turn out to be we'll have to wait and see.

"Sakho's likely to be out for a few weeks to come with a quite serious injury, Joel Ward is still recovering, and there's no sign of him recovering in the next few days, and then we've lost Scott Dann, we've lost Jason Puncheon, so I'm afraid we've stretched our resources to the absolute limit.

“We don't have unlimited resources, so the subject of buying a centre-back's never come up, because we weren't expecting both Mamadou Sakho and Scott Dann to be out for long periods of time. Who knows now? There'll be discussions; football's an ever-revolving subject. It's not something we've contemplated up to now."