ROY Hodgson has advised young duo Matheus Franca and David Ozoh to stay patient in their efforts to become Crystal Palace regulars.
Summer signing Franca is still only 19 and joined the Eagles from Flamengo for £17million with the aim of becoming Wilfried Zaha’s long-term replacement.
He missed the early stages of the campaign with a back injury before finally making his debut off the bench in the 4-0 defeat at Newcastle in late October.
Since then Franca has made a handful of appearances off the bench and again came on to replace Eberechi Eze in Wednesday’s 1-0 FA Cup defeat at Everton.
Ozoh was also a second half introduction at Goodison and, like Franca, has also made fleeting Premier League cameos.
Veteran boss Hodgson understands why the duo are keen for more regular opportunities but is taking the long-term view on their progress.
He explained: “They’re young, aren’t they?
“I mean they’re young, they have ambitions, a lot of aspirations as well, and especially if you’ve come from Brazil like França, you’ve come here with dreams and thoughts of taking the Premier League by storm.
“It’s not that easy, unfortunately, for players coming in when they’re young – and of course he came in with an injury into the bargain, which took six or seven weeks for us to sort out.
“Ozoh has come in from our own academy.”
Hodgson added: “I think these players have to come to terms with the fact that it’s not going to be easy to break into a Premier League side.
“We have some good players, and especially when we get everybody back from the injury and from the AFCON tournament, we have quite a strong, experienced and steady side.
“But it was good that they got at least that 30 minutes the other night and it enabled me, of course, also to spare one or two players.”
The manager received criticism from Palace fans for hooking Eze on Merseyside, but again pointed out it was always the intention to make that call with tomorrow’s game at Arsenal quickly following.
And Hodgson also suggested his side actually looked more dangerous once the changes had been made.
The Selhurst gaffer said: “In particular we decided before the game that Eze wouldn’t play more than about 60 minutes.
“He’s only just back from injury himself, and then we decided with the two wing-backs, who’d done an awful lot of work and with a game coming in two days’ time, we’d take them off, and we were able to make a couple more changes.
“But frankly, it didn’t actually affect our performance as much as I would have thought.”
Hodgson added: “I thought the lads that came on did reasonably well – and in fact we had our best chances in the last 15 minutes of the game.
“We created three really clear-cut chances, contrived to miss them, but we didn’t suddenly fall away in terms of our standard of play.
“But I suppose I can even see something positive in that because as many as six or seven players who maybe will start the game tomorrow didn’t play the last 30 minutes of the game against Everton.”
