Palace are the last club to win in the league at Anfield, the Etihad, the Emirates and Old Trafford and are set up to hit teams who underestimate them on the counter
It is probably worth acknowledging from the outset, given the established rhetoric, that Crystal Palace have lost only to the champions at Selhurst Park since March. Sure, they have scored only once there across their two league matches this season and, yes, both of their opponents ended depleted by a second-half dismissal. But, when a team have won only 39 of 116 home games as they embark on a seventh successive season in the top flight, even the merest hint of a positive is to be grasped.
Yet, for all that there is promise in the relative recent upturn on home territory, it is Palace’s forte on their travels which will leave Tottenham Hotspur wary on Saturday. Some more raw statistics: only Manchester City, Liverpool, Spurs, Manchester United and Chelsea boast more than the 50 points accrued by Roy Hodgson’s Palace on their travels in the two years since his appointment. Sam Allardyce’s Palace were the last away side to win at Anfield but it is the current manager who has masterminded the most recent victories by league visitors to the Etihad, the Emirates and Old Trafford.
This team were built to flourish on the counter, blessed with pace up front and industrious players who occupy deeper positions. Those managers who have excelled with Palace since promotion in 2013 have tended to boast a certain pragmatism. This team have ended a season having mustered a half-century of league goals only twice over the past six campaigns and, aside from Christian Benteke’s first year at the club, have lacked a prolific front-man. “But I’d include the forwards in that band of players who work very hard to protect the goalkeeper,” said Hodgson when charting diligence. “Right from the front we have worked to defend, seal off spaces and make it hard for teams to get behind us.
“It has been a real team effort. When the opposition have the ball we work prodigiously to get and keep in shape, and keep them in front of us because, if the game becomes very open, we might not always come out on top. We have players who, given time and space, can use it to their advantage, and we have to make sure we don’t relent on that side of our game.”
A lack of guile has been an issue in unlocking what Hodgson cited as “circumspect” opponents in south London. Away from Selhurst Park, when hosts sense Palace are a side they should beat, they are capable of rare ruthlessness.
Yet if the defence are currently the stingiest in the division – with Gary Cahill excelling since his summer arrival, and Mamadou Sakho and James Tomkins restored to fitness – they will need Wilfried Zaha to spark across the capital if they are to secure another notable scalp. The Ivorian, attempting to split from his long-term agent at Unique Sports Management, has been striving for rhythm after an unsettling summer. Palace know he would rather be elsewhere but, unless a suitor matches an asking price unlikely to dip below £80m in January or the summer, the 26-year-old’s future remains at the club through whose academy he graduated.
Zaha, legitimately enough for a player of his talent, pines for an opportunity to play in the Champions League. Palace spent the international window in the rarefied air of fourth place, though, with the season still in its infancy, aspirations remain realistic. Their October looks daunting. As for this weekend, it is 22 years since they won a league game at Spurs.
Hodgson had reminded the throng at a Palace for Life Foundation event in midweek it is “not going to be rainbows and blue skies all the way through”. Yet the manager will go into his planning meeting with the chairman, Steve Parish, next week with the hierarchy acutely aware of how reassuring his presence remains. The 72-year-old has entered the final 12 months of his contract. “But it’s not a meeting about my contract,” Hodgson said. “It’s a meeting about the future of the club. If my role in that future comes up, we’ll discuss it.” He has no great desire to bid farewell.
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