The Premier League weekend concludes with a Monday Night Football this week, which is all about the capital as two London sides battle it out when Crystal Palace look to ease their relegation concerns when they host Chelsea at Selhurst Park.
Crystal Palace have seen the three sides immediately below them in the table all lose this weekend to take some of the pressure off of them in this match and were they to win they would do a lot of good for themselves. Chelsea will be looking to build up a run of form ahead of the Carabao Cup final in two weeks.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Premier League channels with the Monday Night Football show beginning at 6.30pm ahead of an 8pm kick off at Selhurst Park.
Crystal Palace
This clearly hasn’t been the season that Crystal Palace fans were expecting after the high energy, attacking, free-flowing way that they ended last term. They haven’t been helped one bit by injuries it has to be said but three wins in 16 matches coming into this match, 18 if you include the two FA Cup games against Everton, clearly isn’t good enough and you wonder just what the atmosphere will be like among the home fraternity in this match.
The big problem for Palace has been goals and the underlying issue to that is they can’t seem to get Michael Olise and Ebere Eze on the pitch at the same time. They are the two men that they have that can open an opposition up and without them they can look toothless. The positive is that they have won their last two at Selhurst Park but they had both those key players involved in those games and you just wonder if they have an injury or two too many now.
Chelsea
This clearly hasn’t been the campaign that anyone connected to Chelsea would have wanted either. They haven’t been able to find any consistency to their play at all. On the rare occasions they have been good they have tended to look very good but much more often they have been poor and when those performances have come into their play they have looked a bit of a shambles at times. They did have a good win at Aston Villa in the cup last week though which they will hope will spark them onto better things.
Generally the better football that Chelsea have played this season has come in the cup competitions so they will be hoping that they can convert that into their cup form into a league match here. The problem they have in terms of the league is they aren’t playing for anything now. They are 10 points off the top six and more than that from the relegation zone so they will need to find a way to motivate themselves to get some sort of consistent results going.
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Team News
Crystal Palace have been dealt blows with the news that key trio Eberechi Eze, Michael Olise and Marc Guehi are all going to miss this match, which leaves the Eagles pretty thin, especially in attacking areas of the pitch.
Chelsea have had an extensive injury list for a while now and it looks like Benoit Badiashile has been added to it after he sustained a groin issue in the win over Aston Villa last week. Levi Colwill and Trevoh Chalobah will be assessed ahead of the game.
Betting
This isn’t an easy game to bet on largely because you couldn’t really trust either of these teams to win the game even if you wanted to. I do think Crystal Palace are going to be hampered by their injuries though and the lack of an Eberechi Eze or Michael Olise to unlock the door could give Chelsea a little less pressure defensively which I think they have been crying out for. That makes me sway towards the Blues in this one.
I’m not interested in backing them at odds on though. If I am going to get involved in this one then it is going to be with a bit of value added to a bet and so with that in mind I’ll chance Chelsea to win to nil. Palace have Odsonne Edouard as their top scorer with six goals but he hasn’t scored since December and has only scored twice since the middle of September so he isn’t exactly flowing. With Olise and Eze out the next top scorer is Jean-Philippe Mateta who has three goals for the season including the consolation at Brighton last week. As a general rule Chelsea don’t do clean sheets, they only have two in their last 10 matches but a goal shy Palace might struggle to score in a game Chelsea should really dominate. I’ll play the 2/1 that Chelsea win to nil.
Tips
Back Chelsea to win to nil for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with BetVictor
