Roy Hodgson praised Christian Benteke after his contribution in Palace’s 3-2 win at Arsenal.

Benteke opened the scoring on 17 minutes to register his first goal in nearly 12 months after a season sidelined for large spells with injury.

Despite the £30million man putting to rest his goal woes, Hodgson was more pleased with the Belgian’s all-round game.

“He’s more than just a goal scorer,” said the Palace boss.

“His all-round performance was fantastic.

“If he played that way and someone else scored, I wouldn’t be saying we should berate him for not scoring.

“Of course, forwards want to score and I’m sure it’s a wait of his mind.

“But I thought in tandem with Wilf (Zaha), they did a good job, defensively too.”

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Benteke’s strike, along with Zaha and James McArthur efforts rounded of a ‘satisfying’ performance for Roy Hodgson despite goals from Mesut Ozil and a late Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang score making for a nervy last ten minutes.

“If you get a result here you’re going to have to give good perf.

“Your defending needs to be top notch, and you have to make certain when you get the ball and you find some space, you hope your front two perform.

“And I thought they were really good and we were good value for the win.”

The win sees Palace leapfrog back above Newcastle to go 12th before next weeks visit of Everton.