The victory was also a first this season in the absence of injured talisman Wilfried Zaha.
"I don't feel the need to be vindicated," Hodgson said. "I don't like to use that word because the use of the word vindication would suggest that something has been going awfully wrong in what we have been trying to do for the whole of the season. I don't think vindication is the right word.
"We needed a better performance, we needed to show the commitment, the courage, the desire that we showed tonight in such an important game. We needed to do that because our previous two games obviously weren't good enough."