He certainly had plenty of time to think over that bold statement as his Crystal Palace side endured the weekend from hell.

Delayed five hours by a train breakdown and then kept up until the early hours by a wedding, Hodgson could have been forgiven for thinking everything was conspiring against him.

His woes had only just started though with Hodgson saying: “Basically, anything that could go wrong did go wrong.”

Things did get better though. Palace got a point and Hodgson received appreciative applause from his former club’s fans – perhaps they were just congratulating him on getting there.

West Brom are famed for their 2005 Great Escape and Hodgson has also masterminded mighty turnarounds of his own at the Hawthorns and Fulham.

Palace have still not managed an away goal this season but this gritty draw made it five points from five games and took them off the bottom of the table.

Hodgson said: “Would this be the greatest? Yes it probably would be. I’ve been in charge of teams in trouble before but the seven games, zero points is probably as big a shot in the foot as you are ever going to get in the Premier League.

“So if we can avoid relegation having done that then that really would be something special.”

For former Palace manager Alan Pardew, this was not exactly what he would have wanted but he said: “I was encouraged because I’m still missing five or six players you could argue might be starters, certainly three or four. If that’s the quality of the group I have then we’ll be fine.”