Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson has confirmed Crystal Palace will be without four key players when they host Chelsea on Monday night in a Premier League clash.

“We have lost all three of them, there is no question that it is a massive blow,” Hodgson confirmed at his pre-match press conference. “In particular after the Sheffield United game, when we were really thinking we were going to be OK now we have got these guys back, and just the opposite has occurred.

“Furthermore Michael has picked up another serious injury which is absolutely devastating for him, for the club, for everyone really. Strangely enough, it was one of those situations where so many things went wrong that could have gone right, but we don’t have hindsight.

“It was the perfect storm in every respect, but injuries do happen. That is the bottom line. They happened in this game, and now we are trying to seek reasons why exactly could it have happened when it happened, but it could have happened at any time. There is no question of that. He could have come on for five minutes and done that, he could have not come on at all and then done it in the first training session here.

“For me, it’s another element of incredible bad luck we have suffered recently. To lose those two and Marc Guéhi in the same period of time, and add to that [Cheick] Doucouré that we’ve had to come to terms with, that is four of the players most important to the club and the team last season we don’t have anymore.

“What do we do? We make sure we get on with it, we make certain we do our best to prepare the team that are there to play, and you hope that some of them are going to come up and show elements of their play that we haven’t seen because they haven’t been given the chance up to now.”

Crystal Palace will be without Michael Olise, Marc Guéhi, Eberechi Eze and Cheick Doucouré for the game against Chelsea.