Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson has admitted that he is "worried" about the knee injury sustained by Joel Ward during this afternoon's 2-1 defeat to Liverpool at Selhurst Park.
Ward passed a late fitness test to start the match after overcoming a groin injury he picked up before the international break, but he was forced off again with 20 minutes remaining against the league leaders following a collision with a Liverpool player.
Hodgson was unsure as to the extent of the injury but admitted that his side could not afford to lose the defender for a lengthy period.
"I'm worried because it was a knee-to-knee clash near the touchline. I can't enlighten you for obvious reasons. He has to be assessed, and that probably won't take place until Monday now. He'll be having a total examination of the knee injury he's got and then we'll find out the extent of it," he told reporters at his post-match press conference.
"If it's going to be an injury which takes a period of time it's something we can ill-afford as that's an area of the squad where we don't have as much back-up as we do for example in the midfield area, where we have quite a lot of players fighting for a place.
"In fact today we weren't planning to replace Joel Ward, we were planning to give James McCarthy his chance to come on alongside [Jeffrey] Schlupp and replace our two unbelievably hard-working midfield players either side of Luka [Milivojevic], but that had to be cancelled when Joel went down and Martin [Kelly] had to be a substitute for him."
Palace have now picked up just one point from their last five games, leaving them 13th in the Premier League table.
Barney Corkhill
