Crystal Palace v CHELSEA: Preview

Date: Saturday 4^th January 2025

Venue: Selhurst Park

Kick-off: 15:00 GMT

Today marks our first game of 2025 and honestly, I feel flat about it. After a good spell of form and some pretty pleasing football to watch, our last 3 games have felt a bit deja vu for my liking. From the clumsiest of defending, strewn with schoolboy errors, to the drying up of goals and ideas, and worse still, the statue on the sidelines, apparently struck down with some sort of game management related amnesia.

Still plenty to say after games it seems but alas, the “We expect to lose games” following so closely on the heels of the “we’re not in a title race, we’re exceeding expectations” repeated until we’ve absolutely made him right, just feels a bit Graham Potter-ish. Demotivating, demoralising and devoid of anything resembling leadership.

Anyway, now that it’s clear we’re not in a title race because we’re starting the day 10 points behind the leaders (having played a game more) and clinging onto 4th place, we make the short trip to Selhurst Park to take on Crystal Palace. Whilst 15th in the table and struggling for victories at home, they won at home last time out and aren’t shy of accepting a draw.

Chelsea have won 12 of their 15 Premier League visits to Selhurst Park, and despite a draw at Stamford Bridge in September, Crystal Palace are without a win in 15 league and cup meetings with Chelsea. Mind you, Fulham and Ipswich swept aside our records against them with ease.

So, it’s pretty clear if we start 2025 the way we ended 2024, we’ll see another record come to an end and risk finishing the day outside of the top four.

.

MANAGER’S VIEWS

Going into tonight’s game, Crystal Palace manager Oliver Glasner, says “I think Chelsea have a great squad, a fantastic manager, a clear structure of how they play. I know how difficult it is to implement your way of playing, your style of playing so quickly, and they did it fantastically. It is quite a young squad, they have many young players with high potential, with high quality, high talent, a lot of pace.

I watched the game at Ipswich. They had a disallowed goal, very tough offside decision, they had three or four chances to get the equaliser, and then they got punished with one transition, so this game I think if they scored the equaliser, they had good chances to win the game, and all their games are in a similar pattern. The way they’re playing in a 3-2-5, or 3-1-6 structure, this gives them a lot of possibilities in their attack. Also, with the players they have and the wingers inverted, great dribblers, all fantastic players in the pocket, finding space, with Fernández, Caicedo from midfield, great passers. But also when you have six players, sometimes seven players in attack, this gives you also chances for transition and this is how they lost the game at Ipswich, with two transitions. They conceded the goals against Fulham with transitions, but on the other side they’re always dangerous to score goals, they always create chances in any single game, so this will be the challenge: to control their attacking players, their quality and, on the other side, to use the space, to take the mistakes they make and score goals from it.

I don’t think that they will surprise us. I think they can’t surprise us, I think they don’t want to surprise us because they also believe in their strengths, because two match rounds before they were second in the league and they were asked about challenging for the Premier League title. I think Enzo Maresca always stayed humble and kept this down, but again it’s a clear structure, a lot of possession, short passes, also having traps, giving them the pocket and then finding these players like Cole Palmer, like João Felix, and then they are so good and with the first touch to turn and make pressure on the defence and finding the right moment for the pass and creating chances and scoring goals. I really like to watch them, but I think, especially in the second-half at Chelsea, we did it very well, I think we had a good answer. I’m convinced that we are in a better physical shape now than we were at the beginning of the season, we should be tactically better, but we have to show it tomorrow.”

Enzo Maresca meanwhile, says “It is an important game like the rest.  Absolutely we don’t like to lose games and drop points, but it’s not going to affect our journey because we all know and are aware that during the season you are going to lose games.  We finished the first part of the season, now we are going to start the second part thinking again we are going to win games, we are going to lose games, but the important part is to see how the team is improving game-by-game and things that we can do better.”

SQUAD NEWS

For Crystal Palace, Will Hughes (foot) and Adam Wharton (groin) are expected to remain out. Trevoh Chalobah is ineligible to play against us but Marc Guehi returns from suspension.

For Chelsea, Benoit Badiashile and Wesley Fofana remain out. Mudryk’s situation remains the same. Romeo Lavia is back in full training but is unlikely to do more than sit on a bench, in the same way Reece James did against Ipswich despite a defence that resembled Billy Smart’s. We’re told Reece will get some minutes but I would take that literally, so if we’re a couple of goals down with ten minutes to go, we might expect a cameo.

TEAMS

CRYSTAL PALACE (Possible line-up): Henderson; Richards, Lacroix, Guehi; Munoz, Hughes, Lerma, Mitchell; Sarr, Mateta, Eze

CHELSEA (Possible line-up): Sanchez; Gusto, Tosin, Colwill, Cucurella; Enzo, Caicedo; Pedro Neto, Palmer, Sancho; Jackson

LAST SEASON

Crystal Palace 1-3 Chelsea (12^th February 2024)

CURRENT FORM (PL)

Crystal Palace: WDWLDW

Chelsea: WWWDLL

OTHER STUFF

• Crystal Palace are winless in 15 league and cup meetings with Chelsea.
• Chelsea have won six successive visits to Selhurst Park, scoring 14 goals during that run.
• Crystal Palace have lost just two of their last 11 Premier League games.
• Chelsea have gone three Premier League games without a win.
• Chelsea have failed to score in the last two Premier League away games.

PREDICTION

Sportsmole: Crystal Palace 1-1 Chelsea