Roy Hodgson said he 'won't be missing' football in retirement after Crystal Palace's controversial defeat to Liverpool

Roy Hodgson said he "won't be missing anything" when he steps away from football after witnessing Crystal Palace's 2-1 defeat to Liverpool.

Palace's Jordan Ayew was shown two yellow cards to hand Liverpool the initiative, as Mohamed Salah went on to cancel out Jean-Philippe Mateta's penalty at Selhurst Park.

Harvey Elliott came off the bench to score the winner in stoppage time to take Liverpool top of the table.

Defeat capped a miserable week for Hodgson, as the police investigated an object allegedly thrown at the Eagles boss after a 2-0 loss to Bournemouth on Wednesday.

"We're talking too much about the referees," said the 76-year-old. "I've been in football a long time and days like today make me realise that when I leave football behind, I won't be missing anything."

VAR intervened twice, to firstly overturn the decision to award Palace a penalty in the first half, and then give the home side a spot-kick early in the second.

However, Hodgson said his biggest gripe was with the interpretation of handball, plus new directives to crack down on time-wasting and dissent.

"I'm sick about the handball interpretations, sick about these yellow cards for time-wasting, I'm sick about player behaviour all through the game," he said.

"The coaches are trying to do our job and every time I'm trying to give a bit of advice the guy (fourth official) is screaming at me to sit down again, I'm sick of that."

Ayew's cautions took the total of yellow cards shown to Palace players to seven, while Hodgson was also booked for his protests on the touchline.

The former England manager accepted his caution was merited, but took aim at Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk for the manner of Ayew's first booking.

Van Dijk fired a quickly taken free-kick into Ayew, who had not retreated back 10 yards, before the Ghanaian was shown a second yellow card.

"I think if you are Liverpool Football Club you don't need players of Van Djik's quality and status in the game to try and get a player a yellow card by just kicking a ball at him," added Hodgson.

"The second one I thought was a good challenge, even if it is deemed a foul, it is not a yellow card."

Palace have now won just one of their last nine games to slip to 14th in the Premier League table.

Hodgson claimed Eagles fans had been "spoilt" by a decade of staying in the top-flight earlier this week, but insisted his side would not be dragged into a relegation fight.

He said: "I've got no doubts in my mind whatsoever that this group, and if we can add to it in January, that they will keep this club in the Premier League.

"But the fact is if you want to keep raising the bar and say you've got to be in the top 10, that'll be difficult for us with the players we've got at the moment."

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp admitted his side had got away with a poor performance when the game was still 11 against 11, but was delighted to win for the second time on the road in four days to maintain their title challenge.

"I told the boys that's the first game I saw that somebody plays as bad as we did for 76 minutes and still ends up winning," said Klopp.

"In this period of the year you have to get through this and get results. Nobody is here for the Oscar or whatever, it is about three points, we got them and we are more than happy."

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