Speaking with Palace TV after Crystal Palace's storming return to Premier League football, Roy Hodgson provided his views on the squad fitness and hailed engine-room midfielder, James McArthur.
"The player fitness was quite good," he said. "I was surprised. We only had the three weeks. We didn’t do much in terms of contact football before we got the green light. Before that, we were just running up and down the field.
"We only had one practice game and that was only 3x30 minutes. No player in that game got more than 65/70 minutes.