Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson has insisted that he will not prioritise the Premier League over the EFL Cup as he believes that his side can succeed on both fronts.
The Eagles currently sit rock-bottom of the Premier League table and five points from safety having lost eight of their opening nine matches, and on Tuesday they travel to a Bristol City side fighting for a playoff spot in the Championship.
Hodgson confirmed that he will make changes for the fourth-round trip to Ashton Gate, but rejected the suggestion that the EFL Cup is less of a priority.
"I am hoping to [make changes], I'd like to because we have some very, very good players. For example, we have two centre-backs who played virtually all of last year in Tomkins and Kelly and at the moment, they're not getting a game and it would be interesting for me to see them," he told reporters.
"We've got a Welsh international goalkeeper on the bench, for example, so there are lots of situations like that where people are crying out for a game, and it would be wrong of me I think not to give them a chance in a midweek game to show what they can do. I'm hoping we'll have a strong team going to Bristol.
"We are going to go there and try to win the game - it's not a question of we don't care about Tuesday because we have got a match on the Saturday. At the moment, I think we are capable of doing both of those things. We don't have an enormous amount of midweek games at Crystal Palace - once we're out of this cup, we won't have any more midweek games until such time as we perhaps play in the FA Cup, so we have no reason to start protecting ourselves.
"It's more a question of maybe giving one or two players who have been champing at the bit to try to get a chance to show what they can do vis-a-vis the ones I am choosing in the first team at the moment to show they they have got the quality we are looking for too."
Palace's next league game sees them host fellow strugglers West Ham United on Saturday.
Barney Corkhill
