Upcoming Match-ups

EPL Odds: Gunners Look To Bounce Back vs Palace

Don Aguero

by Don Aguero in News

Updated Jan 17, 2018 · 9:39 AM PST

Arsenal (-290) vs Crystal Palace (+1000), Draw (+460)

Crystal Palace (4-4-10, 16 points) will travel to the Emirates on New Year’s Day to take on Arsenal (11-4-3, 37 points) in the 19th round of the English Premier League.

Palace are currently in 17th place at the moment, just one place and two points above the dreaded dotted line. They’ve had a tough draw in the last few weeks, recently taking on Chelsea and Manchester United and losing to both. This Monday, they face another tough game against Arsenal.

For a team hovering above relegation, Palace have managed to score an impressive number of goals. With 29 goals-for so far in the season, there are only five teams in the Premier League that have outscored the scrappy Londoners.

Christian Benteke, who was disastrous last season at Liverpool, leads the scoring with an impressive eight tallies. That’s just one goal short of the nine he scored in the entire 2015-16 season with Liverpool. James McArthur has also been impressive this season with five goals to his name.

But of course, where Crystal Palace falls short is in defense. They have been terrible at defending set pieces this season and their games are riddled with individual errors. Their 33 goals-against are third-worst in the EPL.

Arsenal are coming off a nervous 1-0 victory against West Brom last week after Olivier Giroud saved the Gunners with a goal late in the game. Anything but a win would have infuriated Arsenal fans, who have been disappointed with their club’s performance of late. The Gunners lost their previous two matches against Everton (2-1 away) and Man City (2-1 away). Making matters worse, every other team in the top six has won its last three games, dropping Arsenal to fourth place in the standings.

The brunt of the criticism has been laid on manager Arsene Wenger and star midfielder Mesut Ozil. But realistically, the criticism deserves to be spread more evenly throughout the team.

If the Gunners are going to regain momentum, they cannot settle for anything but a win against Palace. That shouldn’t be too tough of a challenge for the team. But it all depends on which Arsenal shows up to the field come Monday.

Pick: Arsenal (-290)


Photo credit: “fighting with the legends of yore” by Scott Swigart, CC BY-SA 2.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0], via Flickr.

Author Image