Crystal Palace’s Christian Benteke is unlikely to return to action this year according to Roy Hodgson.

Following a knee injury the Belgian striker has undergone arthroscopic surgery which will likely cause him to miss the next three months.

"I think it will take until 2019 before we see him, but hopefully earlier than later in 2019,” said Hodgson.

"Christian Benteke was operated on yesterday. We tried the conservative route to put an end to his knee problem, which he has suffered with for a while.

"That didn't work out. There was always the risk that if it didn't work out an operation would be necessary and I got the bad news that the operation was necessary, had taken place and now he will be out for a long period of time.

"It's an operation and normally operations take time. It is dangerous for people like myself to start saying 'it will be this amount of time' because you fall foul of the doctors and the sport scientists who have a different view.

"But there's no doubt we won't be seeing much of him this year."

Benteke has not played since early September due to the injury, but surgeons are confident the operation went well and now the striker will focus his effort son recovery.

“All has gone well," Benteke tweeted.

"Now to concentrate on getting back to full health as soon as possible!"