Roy Hodgson is relishing the return of Crystal Palace star Wilfried Zaha.

The takes his relegation-threatened team to Huddersfield on Saturday, where not only will Zaha start following his appearance as a substitute last week at Chelsea, but Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Mamadou Sakho and Yohan Cabaye are again fit.

Little over three weeks ago against Tottenham, Palace were without 12 injured senior players, but Hodgson has his most influential quartet available again and Zaha is expected to be particularly key.

They are still to secure a single league point this season in his absence, and Hodgson said of the 25-year-old as he compared him to the world's finest player: "He has the exceptional ability to run with the ball and beat people.

"Those type of players are very important as we saw in the Chelsea-Barcelona game and Lionel Messi. If Messi hadn't played it could have been a totally different result (Barca won 3-0).

"We have had to do without (Zaha, Sakho, Loftus-Cheek and Cabaye) for a long period of time and as I said about Lionel Messi, you watch a game (against Chelsea) and you wouldn't have to be too intelligent to work out that this guy is so important for his team and if you took him out of their team, they might not be quite as dominant as they have been.

"All four are definitely available and I have to pick what I think is the best starting 11 from this group - something I haven't been able to do for a long period of time.

"We have suffered a little bit in the last few weeks from those defeats, particularly against Tottenham and Manchester United, and they are hard to take, those last-minute goals when you have worked so hard and think you have got something from the game but come away with nothing.

"Having these guys come back has helped remove any lingering gloom there might have been, and most important of all it stops you feeling sorry for yourself, because that's a very dangerous thing to do."

Zaha will almost certainly start having excelled throughout the second half of last week's 2-1 defeat at Chelsea, but Hodgson has decisions to take over the other three against Huddersfield's high-intensity style of play.

"They are mechanically fit to start but they are very short of match practice and this will be a high tempo game, a game where any mistake is going to be potentially costly," the 70-year-old said.

"It is one thing being mechanically fit, to get through a training session, and then playing 90 minutes at a high level and high intensity we're going to play in this coming game.

"I couldn't give you any real heads-up on that because I don't have a crystal ball, but they certainly could start, or they could come on and play a cameo role."