“That was no surprise, was it?” Roy Hodgson said, shrugging his shoulders ever so slightly. There was an air of inevitability that Danny Ings would play a key part here given the Crystal Palace manager spent much of the buildup to this match highlighting the striker’s predatory instincts inside the box. It was under Hodgson in Lithuania four years ago that the in-form Southampton striker won his sole
England cap and here Ings, who turned his nose up at a move to Palace in favour of a return to his boyhood club last year, seized on a sloppy Martin Kelly pass to score his 12th goal of the season, cancelling out James Tomkins’s headed opener to earn a revived Southampton a point. Ings’s equaliser came just as things seemed to be getting away from them but in the end Palace, who had a first-half goal disallowed by VAR owing to a marginal offside decision, were grateful for a point.
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