Crystal Palace boss Roy Hodgson defended his tactics for defeat to Chelsea.

N'Golo Kante struck the only goal of the game, with Hodgson admitting he wanted to keep things tight to the end.

The manager said, “We couldn't be more adventurous unless we wanted to get beaten 4-0 or 5-0. It wasn't one of our better days technically so we could have opened ourselves up for 40 minutes and see them exploit the spaces, or we could try and do what we did and keep things tight and the keep the game under some sort of control until 20 minutes from the end and try to take our chances.

“That's what we did but it didn't work as we didn't score. It was the sort of game where we could have played better on the ball, and they were very, very good in terms of their organisation and structure, so it was going to be a tight game if we could keep it tight. That's why we lost the game 1-0 and not by a lot of goals."

Reflecting further on the game, he added: “They were very good, but in the first half our discipline was very focussed and we limited their goalscoring chances, and apart from their offside goal I thought we did quite well.

“After they scored the goal we missed two opportunities but we couldn't get hold of the ball enough as they kept it too well and we weren't able to get it from them."