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Preview: Palace v Arsenal, 5 players out, Ox starts + prediction

By on April 10, 2017

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Arsenal desperately need to bring three points back to north London when we take on Crystal Palace this evening.

It was a disappointing weekend for us results-wise as all of our main rivals picked up victories with United, City, Spurs and Liverpool all winning so the pressure is on for us to follow suit.

We eased to a solid 3-0 win over West Ham last Wednesday but it was our first victory in our last four league games so we’re down in sixth position in the table.

The good news is we have two games in hand over fourth-placed City and three over Liverpool so we’re still in the mix for Champions League qualification, but only if we win our games starting tonight.

However, I’m not expecting an easy game as Palace have been doing well of late and while they lost at Southampton last week, they won their last four games previous including an impressive 2-1 win at Chelsea.

Team News

Cech and Ospina are still unavailable so Martinez is set to continue between the sticks tonight and hopefully he can build on a solid outing against West Ham.

Koscielny is also out with an Achilles injury so Gabriel will keep his place at the back but Coquelin is available again after missing the Hammers game following a family bereavement.

Oxlade-Chamberlain and Ramsey are pushing for recalls after making their injury comebacks off the bench last time out but Perez is still nursing a thigh problem.

Cazorla is also still missing as he won’t play again this season due to an Achilles injury meaning Wenger will be without five first team players for tonight’s game.

As for Palace, they’ll be without Cabaye after he picked up a calf injury while the likes of Tomkins, Wickham, Souare and Dann are also out.

Preferred line-up

Palace: Hennessey, Ward, Kelly, Sakho, Schlupp, Milivojevic, Ledley, Zaha, Puncheon, Townsend, Benteke.

Predcition

Our record at Palace is excellent as it’s been almost 40 years since we lost a top-flight league game away to the Eagles but history doesn’t count for much on the day. Hopefully the players have their confidence back following the West Ham win because I think this is going to be a difficult game. Palace are a dangerous side and Benteke will cause our defence plenty of problems, however, we simply have to win in order to keep alive our top four hopes and I think we’ll come away with all three points. Palace 1-2 Arsenal

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