Crystal Palace vs Arsenal: Prediction and Preview
Crystal Palace vs Arsenal: The Quick Hits
- At 45.2%, the supercomputer believes Arsenal represents the best chance of an away win on Matchday 2.
- But oddly, since Mikel Arteta took charge, Arsenal have played in four away league matches on a Monday night… and lost all of them.
- Since Roy Hodgson returned in April, Palace have averaged 15.7 shots per game in the Premier League, just over five more shots than they had on average under Patrick Vieira (10.5).
Match Preview
A London derby between Crystal Palace and Arsenal rounds off the week’s fixtures on a Premier League card that is reduced to nine matches due to the postponement of Luton vs Burnley.
Both sides got off to winning starts on Matchday 1, with Arsenal beating Nottingham Forest 2-1 at the Emirates and Crystal Palace defeating Sheffield United 1-0 at Bramall Lane.
An unblemished start to the season will end for one of those sides on Monday night.
Despite a dominant first-half display, Arsenal weren’t especially convincing in their home win against Forest. They enjoyed an extremely comfortable opening 45 minutes, thanks to goals from Eddie Nketiah and Bukayo Saka, which put them 2-0 up at the break. Both Nketiah – who’ll likely retain his starting spot with Gabriel Jesus still out – and Saka now have a chance to become the first English player since Ian Wright in 1997 to score in both of Arsenal’s first two games of a Premier League season.
Mikel Arteta’s side saw 84.2% of the ball in the first-half, a figure higher than in any first half of a Premier League game last season. They turned that into seven shots to Forest’s one as a routine home win looked on the cards.
They stumbled after the break though, in a second half marred by a knee injury to new signing Jurriën Timber. It’ll likely sideline him for the majority of the season. The Dutchman has mainly played on the left side of defence since joining, and Arteta will hope Oleksandr Zinchenko is fit enough to come in to replace him for this one.
Taiwo Awoniyi made things nervous for the home crowd with a late strike, and Arsenal ended up clinging to a one-goal victory. Their performance was one of three across the opening weekend where the winning team registered a lower expected tally than their opponents (Fulham and Manchester United were the others).
Crystal Palace continued their surprisingly gung-ho style under Roy Hodgson against Sheffield United. They took 24 shots on MD 1, the most in an away Premier League game that Opta has on record (since 2003-04). In fact, since Hodgson returned in March, Palace have averaged 15.7 shots per game in the Premier League, just over five more shots per game than they had under Patrick Vieira in the competition (10.5).
Odsonne Édouard scored the winner last weekend and could become just the second player to score in Palace’s first two games of a Premier League season after Wilfried Zaha in 2020-21.
Palace were buoyed by some good news leading up to the fixture. Despite speculation linking him with Chelsea, Michael Olise recently signed a new contract with Palace, penning a four-year deal. The Frenchman, who is currently recovering from a thigh injury, registered 11 assists and scored twice last season.
Crystal Palace vs Arsenal Head-to-Head
Crystal Palace’s recent record against Arsenal is pretty poor, having lost both games between the two sides last season. Palace have won just one of the last eight Premier League meetings with Arsenal, a 3-0 home win in April 2022.
Arsenal’s record in London derbies was at the heart of their surprising Premier League title tilt. They won 10 of 12 such matches last season – a record number of London derby league wins by a team in a season in Football League history – and drew the other two.
Recent Form
As mentioned, Palace got off to a victorious start on MD 1. But in only one previous top-flight season have they opened with two wins in their first two matches, doing so in 2020-21 during Hodgson’s first spell in charge.
Palace are yet to lose at home in the Premier League since Hodgson’s return to the club, winning three and drawing two under the 76-year-old. However, they’ve only won their opening home Premier League game of the season once in 14 previous attempts (D3 L10), beating Southampton 1-0 in 2020-21, and losing 2-0 to Arsenal in their opening home game last season.
Arsenal will hope to go two from two to start the season, but the fact this game falls on a Monday might be cause for concern. In an interesting quirk, since Arteta took charge, Arsenal have played in four away league matches on a Monday night… and lost all of them.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team-ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off this weekend, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.https://dataviz.theanalyst.com/opta-power-rankings/?tab=compare&teamIds=31,3
Crystal Palace vs Arsenal Prediction
At 45.2%, the supercomputer believes Arsenal represent the best chance of an away win in Matchday 2.
But Crystal Palace will have hope of getting something out of the game, with their chances at 26.3% and the draw coming in at 28.5%.
Arsenal are our supercomputer’s overall second-favourites for the Premier League title behind Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, although their 4.9% probability of becoming champions is dwarfed by City’s 89.6%. Second is their most likely position, and that will see them qualify for Champions League football again ahead of Liverpool and Manchester United, according to our simulations.
For Palace, the supercomputer reckons another mid-table finish is on the cards. Their most likely finishing position is 12th (12.3%) followed by 11th (11.9%), nestled between Fulham and West Ham.
Source: The Analyst
