Prediction & odds for the game: Crystal Palace (3/1) v Arsenal (4/5)
When: Saturday, 11th January 2020 @ 12.30pm K.O
Where: Selhurst Park
Crystal Palace will attempt to derail Mikel Arteta’s start to life at Arsenal when they meet in the Premier League at Selhurst Park.
Crystal Palace
While the inconsistency of Crystal Palace this season may be both infuriating and exciting for Eagles fans, neutrals are just fascinated to see how this ‘project’ of sorts continues to develop under the leadership of Roy Hodgson. The next step comes in the form of the January transfer window, where it’s pretty clear to see that keeping hold of Wilfried Zaha is going to be priority number one. Beyond that, they need to bring in a few new faces if they want to go after a place in the top half.
Just one win in six isn’t going to be filling Palace fans with joy or confidence, with the victory being a narrow 2-1 success over West Ham United on Boxing Day. They also picked up a point against Norwich, Southampton and Brighton, but suffered disappointing losses to Newcastle and Derby – with the latter knocking them out of the FA Cup.
Arsenal
A new regime doesn’t necessarily always lead to success, but Gunners fans have to believe that they’re on the right track for the first time in a long time. They’ll only really be able to properly analyse the state of the club once the season comes to an end and Mikel Arteta gets a full summer to work with. Still, even with that being the case, there’s still a whole lot to play for during the current campaign from the FA Cup to the Europa League to the outside possibility of a push for the top four.
A 3-0 loss against Manchester City and a 0-0 draw against Everton served as tough viewing for Arsenal fans, but since the new boss has taken over they’ve only lost one of their last four games which was a heartbreaking defeat at the hands of Chelsea. They drew with Bournemouth prior to that before winning back-to-back encounters against Manchester United & Leeds.
Conclusion
Palace are going to come out swinging but we think they’ll wind up leaving themselves a little bit more vulnerable to this new-look Arsenal side under the guidance of Mikel Arteta. It’s clear to see that the Gunners are going to need quite a bit of work if they want to seriously challenge for the top four this season, and grinding out a result against a tough side like Crystal Palace is the right way to go about doing that. It’ll be tough, but we think they’ll just about manage to get over the finish line.
This is going to be an entertaining one to watch as far as we can tell, which is why we’re putting our weight behind the over 2.5 goals threshold.
Verdict: Back the away win at odds of 4/5 and the over 2.5 goals scored at odds of 8/11. (All odds are taken from bet365).
[geosnippet id=3620]Feel free to bet on this clash of Crystal Palace v Arsenal at the betting page, or check out some other games over at the soccer predictions page.
