Crystal Palace are not ready to sell Eberechi Eze after his impressive debut season and they will fend off transfer interest in him during the summer transfer window, according to manager Roy Hodgson.
Eze has sparked the Eagles' attack with his creativity and pace since his £20 million move from Championship club Queens Park Rangers last August.
On Saturday, the 22-year-old assisted Christian Benteke to open the scoring against Sheffield United two minutes into the encounter, and he later sealed maximum points for the visitors at Bramall Lane with his 88th-minute shot after driving the ball from his own half.
Eze’s contribution helped Crystal Palace cement their Premier League status for next season having gathered 41 points from 34 matches.
When asked about potential transfer interest in Eze, Hodgson was quoted by Sky Sports: "It has not really occurred to me as we've only just signed him.
"It was quite an investment for our club to pay 15 (million pounds) and then five (million pounds) in add-ons - that's quite a big investment for us. I wasn't contemplating that it was an investment that would only last one season and then he would move somewhere else, so I hope that is not the case.
"I am pretty sure the club will work very, very hard to make sure any interest in him will be warded off because we brought him into the football club to play for us and to make us better, we didn't bring him into the club to make some small profit on a transfer at the end of the first season.
"It is his first season since coming from the Championship and you expect people to need a bit of time to get fully adjusted to play at this level, and we are delighted with him."
With four goals and five assists in 32 league matches, Eze has the highest involvement in goals (nine) for Crystal Palace after Wilfried Zaha who has scored 10 Premier League goals and laid on two assists so far in this campaign.
Hogson added that the Anglo-Nigerian’s form should inspire Zaha to raise his performance and it will not take pressure off the Ivorian forward.
“I don't know about taking the pressure off Wilf Zaha, I hope he puts the pressure on Wilf Zaha to raise his level of performance to the sort of level that we saw from Eze today, so that would interest me more than contemplating whether or not he's going to take pressure off Wilf,” the former Liverpool manager said.