Unai Emery certainly has got Arsenal playing like Champions against all the lesser teams so far, and we have notched up an amazing 11 wins in a row, and are set to make it TWELVE tomorrow. Like a lot of our opponents in this winning run (except for Sporting Lisbon!) Crystal Palace are languishing down in 15th place, just two points above the relegation spots.
Let us start by looking at Palace’s League results this season……
As you can see, since the opening day of the season they have had one win away at lowly Huddersfield, and at home it is worse where they have only gained one point from 4 games.
We also have to add to these stats the head to head record with Palace which shows that other than a 3-0 home win over us 2 years ago, they haven’t beaten us since 1994!
The Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson, is tying to put a brave face on, despite their abysmal home form when he said: “We can and we will [win home games] because the support we get from the Crystal Palace crowd at Selhurst Park is very, very important. The atmosphere is very congenital to us. It can help us play on the front foot and I’m hoping for that on Sunday.
“As a unit, Arsenal are playing extremely well. They’re working very hard for each other, they’re pressuring the ball very well. I don’t see any obvious weaknesses. It’s going to be a question for us really of making certaing that we work hard to minimise their opportunities, to try and control them as well as we can. We saw Leicester City do that well in the first half of the last league game on Monday night.
“We can play evenly with them. There are no secrets, there are no words really that will enable us to get any points. It’s a question of what we do on the field, how hard working we can be, how organised as a team we can be and then creating enough chances and I’m hoping take some of them.”
To be honest, I really can’t see anything other than a very easy win for Arsenal.
Sam P