Crystal Palace boss Roy Hodgson is delighted with the character his team is now showing.
Hodgson also says a massive key this season was keeping hold of Ebere Eze and Michael Olise.
He told the Five Year Plan podcast: “Character plays a big part," the manager recalls. “The one thing I would say certainly, if I think back to these five years or so I've had at Palace now, there have been a lot of extremely good characters here.
“[Damien] Delaney, James McArthur…. and even forgotten guys like Martin Kelly. The number of times I've put him in at right-back, coming into the team and no one regarded him…. people really should get more credit, I think.
“It's in any leader's books you care to read from any sports, in particular maybe the American ones: they are all 100 percent in agreement that talent may get you so far in the game, but it's character that's going to keep you there. And that's something we sometimes don't take into enough consideration.
“We're blessed in that respect… [This club] is a place for people who are serious about the game, who are prepared to really roll their sleeves up and put in a shift in the game and if then, of course, we can get those players with the quality of the [Ebere] Ezes and the [Marc] Guéhis and [Joachim] Andersens and the [Michael] Olises – if we can get that, alongside that quality – then of course there's no limit.
“I think the club tries hard to do that. What the club has done over these last few years, in getting that Academy up and running, that in itself is an achievement. What we're doing now with the stadium, this club is moving forward all the time.
"Putting a star team together [all at once] doesn't always work, unfortunately. It needs to be done in pieces. I think, at the moment at Palace, there is a nucleus of really good quality Premier League players at the club.
“The trick, I think, is going to be now – and I'm speaking personally – is to build upon that by bringing in one or two more pieces which can make us a bit better. But maybe the most important thing of all is what the club succeeded in doing this year: keeping Eze and Olise."
