The first round of matches in the Premier League post-Christmas concludes on Thursday evening with a London derby of significant importance when Crystal Palace welcome Arsenal to Selhurst Park.
Crystal Palace need to keep up their upturn in form to continue to pull away from danger at the bottom of the table. Arsenal need to sort their away form out if they are going to get back into the top four at the end of the season.
Crystal Palace
The Eagles have certainly improved at home since Roy Hodgson took over and they will be out to continue that strong run at what they want to become a fortress. With the expected improvements in January I think Palace will be fine in terms of not being relegated so their motivation here might be to knock off a so called big gun.
I guess the surprise in this Palace side is that they are so exciting going forward. You wouldn’t necessarily expect that of a Roy Hodgson team and certainly not in the situation he inherited them in so they should be given credit for that. They will be looking for improvements at the back in the matches to come though.
Arsenal
We’ve seen the many sides of Arsenal in recent matches but as ever the common denominator in the majority of them is their inability to defend and against one of the more exciting attacks in the league you would think that is going to be a big issue. If they can find a way to keep things tight it would give them a much better chance of sorting their away woes.
On the flip side of that we saw in that five minute burst against Liverpool last week that they are still capable of special things in attacking areas. They have found goals an issue on the road this season which it has to be said would be a concern for them here but you get the feeling they are too good up front for that to keep on continuing.
Team News
Christian Benteke is back from the suspension which saw him miss the match against Swansea on Boxing Day. Crystal Palace will remain without Damien Delaney and Joel Ward though.
Arsenal will be missing some key players for this match not least the injured Aaron Ramsey and Olivier Giroud. Nacho Monreal is a doubt which is not ideal while Santi Cazorla remains on the sidelines.
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Betting
I understand the concerns of the lack of Arsenal goals on the road but whenever I look at this match I just see goals and plenty of them. Crystal Palace have started to really take it to the opposition at home which is good to see and Arsenal are vulnerable defensively.
Palace are missing some key defenders though so while I buy the concerns over Arsenal’s goals away from home I do expect them to find the net here in what I think will be a high scoring game. I like over 2.75 goals in this one.
Tips
WON – Back Over 2.75 goals for a 4/10 stake at 1.80 with BetVictor
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