Preview: Crystal Palace vs. Liverpool
We’re playing at 12:30 again.
CRYSTAL PALACE VS. LIVERPOOL
| Saturday, October 5th |
Premier League | Selhurst Park
12:30PM GMT/7:30AM EST
Crystal Palace have had a bad time so far. They just lost to Everton this past weekend. Do you know how hard it is to lose to Everton this season? Palace had yet to record a league win this season (though they have progressed in the League Cup), losing to Brentford, West Ham, and Everton and picking up draws against Chelsea, Leicester, and Manchester United.
The draws column is worth considering: some teams with dangerous players have failed to beat them, even if the two traditional top 7 sides are at best uneven thus far this season (to put it mildly on the part of Manchester United).
Palace are a hard team to judge, but can cause problems. There’s a lot of creativity in this Eagles side, even if their start to the season is the joint worst for them for over a decade.
Jean-Philippe Mateta is their main goal threat, and he loves scoring at home: he’s netted 15 in his last 11 at Selhurst Park. Eberechi Eze of course remains the most eye-catching Palace player, and will test Liverpool’s midfield in new ways in possession.
For this match Palace will be without Matheus Franca, Chadi Riad, and Chris Richards; Oliver Glasner’s side do have Trevoh Chalobah on loan and he could make his debut on Saturday. Adam Wharton will face a late fitness test.
Predicted Liverpool Lineup (4-3-3)
Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Konaté, Van Dijk, Robertson; Gravenberch, Mac Allister; Salah, Szoboszlai, Díaz;
For Liverpool, Federico Chiesa faces a late fitness test after being held out of training this week with a minor injury
It’s the early kick-off again. Per Andrew Beasley, Liverpool will have now had more 12:30 kick-offs than the much more common 3:00PM ones since the start of 2019/20 — the price of being team selected for television certainly does feel harsh and a bit unfair.
Per Opta, when Liverpool face Palace the away team tends to win at a much higher rate than normal (47%) — the highest away win ratio for any of the 109 fixtures with 30+ meetings. Liverpool have been the recent beneficiaries of this, winning eight of the last night meetings at Selhurst Park, but Liverpool did lose the last fixture (at Anfield back in April.
Much has been made of Arne Slot’s winning record in his first games as Liverpool manager, but Slot himself will be most concerned with avoiding another sluggish performance like that we witnessed in the loss to Forest. For those watching Mo Salah stats: he’s two goals away from Robbie Fowler’s league goals total of 163.
What the Managers Had to Say
Arne Slot: “[Crystal Palace] have already shown how tough of an opponent they are against the big sides like [Manchester] United and Chelsea. In both situations they got a result so that’s a difficult game for us. The other results were not as they would have liked. Last season they finished really strongly, then lost one or two good players [in the summer]. They will do better during the season - hopefully not tomorrow of course.”
Oliver Glasner: ”Tomorrow, we will need a big heart. They have fantastic players and a new manager doing a fantastic job. Their players look hungry and ambitious but we want to play forward and we want to score because if we don’t do that, we don’t win.”
The Officials
Referee: Simon Hooper Assistants: Adrian Holmes, Simon Long Fourth official: Leigh Doughty VAR: David Coote Assistant VAR: Natalie Aspinall
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