Having scored an important victory during the week, Crystal Palace host a struggling Sunderland side at Selhurst Park on Saturday afternoon.
Palace finally won their first Premier League match under the stewardship of Sam Allardyce, more than a month after he arrived. In doing so, they looked good and thoroughly deserved to beat Bournemouth who could not cope with Palace’s physicality. Whilst the victory was important in terms of points gained, psychologically, Palace may still be damaged as they are still in the relegation zone. However, their next six fixtures are all very winnable and I expect the Eagles to be out of the drop-zone by the time those games have been played. The acquisitions of Van Aanholt, Schlupp, Milivojevic and Sakho means the team will now be even stronger than it was just a few days ago.
With that first victory in the Allardyce era now out of the way, the hosts could easily kick-on, especially since they face a poor Sunderland team here.
Despite drawing against high-flying Tottenham during the last round of fixtures, I still think that Sunderland should be considered favourites for relegation. The sale of the aforementioned Van Aanholt and the loss of Djilobodji through suspension plus injuries to several key players is likely to make them a good deal weaker, whilst the arrivals of Darron Gibson and Bryan Oviedo are hardly that inspiring.
They may have drawn against Spurs at home, but coming to Palace presents a very different challenge and there’s no guarantee they’ll be up for it.
In the betting, at odds of 2/1, Palace can make it two wins with a -1 handicap in quick succession and are worth backing to do just that.
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