Roy Hodgson did not expect Crystal Palace to respond to his methods this early on in his reign.

The Eagles claimed their first league victory of the season after beating Chelsea 2-1 on Saturday. The club had lost their opening seven games.

Hodgson, who guided Fulham to top-flight safety in 2008, believes his side are ahead of schedule in their battle against relegation.

“This has come quicker than I expected,” the Eagles manager said.

“It took us a long while to get anything like this sort of team performance at Fulham - we didn't do it after a month.

“We'd have been into two or three months before we could say, 'Yeah, this is what we want, what we're looking for'.

“Hopefully now the players know that they can do it, because they've done it against the champions, so with 30 games to go, we're never going into a game not feeling that we can get something out of it.”