Roy Hodgson suggests Bakary Sako to start when Crystal Palace travel to Wales

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Christian Benteke is suspended for Crystal Palace’s trip to Swansea City on Saturday.

Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson dropped a major hint that Bakary Sako could start against Swansea City on Saturday with his comments on the club’s official website.

Christian Benteke is suspended after picking up his fifth yellow card of the season in the 3-0 win over Leicester City, in which he also registered his first goal of the campaign.

Hodgson was forced to find a contingency plan when Benteke fell injured earlier in the season and experimented with wingers Wilfried Zaha and Andros Townsend in a front two.

However, after his goals off the bench against Watford and Leicester and his work in training, Hodgson has suggested that Sako is ready to start as the makeshift centre-forward.

The 70-year-old is quoted by Palace’s official website as saying: “I have been impressed with him even before he came on as sub in the last two games and scored on both occasions. In the training sessions I have seen, in my opinion, a different person over the last couple of months than the one I saw in my first month.

“He is working at playing in a different position, he’s playing more centrally in the team and in training than he was when I came here, performing as a left winger. He has worked really hard at his game to take on all the things that we work on every single day and that is in addition to him improving his fitness.

“I can do nothing but heap praise on him for his attitude and has certainly reduced some of the fears we had when Christian was unfit and we didn’t feel we had anyone who could step in and do that type of job, Bakary has enabled us now to feel a lot more comfortable in that respect. There is still a lot of work for him to do though and the real test will come when I put him in the team from the start, either with Benteke or in place of him and his performance then will be very important in us making that judgement of how far he has come in our eyes”.

Sako’s only previous league start this season came in a 4-0 defeat to Manchester United, although he has played from the beginning twice in the EFL Cup and scored on both occasions.

Long-term injury casualty Connor Wickham rejoined Palace training this week, but the 24-year-old striker still has plenty more recovery work to do before he can be considered for selection.