Premier League Preview 2019-20: Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace Football Club
Credit: Crystal Palace
2018-19 Premier League Finish: 12th place
2019-20 Premier League Prediction: 11th place
Transfers In:
Stephen Henderson GK - Nottingham Forest, Free Agent
Jordan Ayew FW - Swansea City £2,500,000
Transfers Out:
Aaron Wan-Bissaka - Manchester United £50,000,000
Jason Puncheon MF - Free Agent
Bakary Sako MF - Free Agent
Pape Souare DF - Free Agent
Julian Speroni GK - Free Agent
Crystal Palace will be starting their 7th consecutive season in the Premier League, which is already the club’s longest run in the top division of English football. Crystal Palace have made this run in the Premier League stick and are starting to establish themselves as an expected Premier League club as they look to be going nowhere anytime soon (hopefully that didn’t just jinx them). Despite their ability to stay out of the relegation zone, Crystal Palace have had 6 different managers in that time frame, as well as 2 interim managers. They head into this season with Roy Hodgson at the helm, who has been with the club since 2017. Going off the track record, pretty good chance he gets canned this season. Despite whoever is the coach, I think this squad is good enough to be a middle of the table club. Worse case scenario I could see them flirt with relegation but I don’t think it would actually happen. Best case scenario, they might could flirt with a spot inside the top 10 like 8th or 9th place. In the end, the club definitely needs to spend the money they receive from players that have already been sold (Aaron Wan-Bissaka) and players that will likely be sold (Wilfried Zaha). Palace were given a gift of £50,000,000 for a guy that played essentially 1 season for them, so take full advantage and sign somebody.
Strength:
Luka Milivojevic
Credit: Daily Star
The attacking midfield. Crystal Palace scored 51 goals last year which is pretty decent. It’s about the norm for a mid table club, but it wasn’t the forwards that were getting all the goals. The forwards on the team combined for a total of 17 goals. While the midfield scored 26 goals. It’s not great that your midfield outscored your forwards but in the end, 26 goals from the midfield is impressive. The largest contributor from the midfield and the largest contributor from the team in general was Luka Milivojevic. Milivojevic scored 12 goals. Townsend, Schlupp, McArthur and Meyer also contributed to the effort. While it’s going to be hard for Milivojevic to repeat last year’s performance I expect Meyer, Townsend and Schlupp to all up their goal totals. The midfield was great last year and Crystal Palace’s success is going to rely heavily on it again as their attack could take an even bigger hit in the coming weeks.
Weakness:
Wilfried Zaha
Credit: Metro
The biggest weakness in this squad is the attack. And the even bigger hit that they could take is them losing Wilfired Zaha, which I would say is very likely at this point. If they do lose Zaha it will likely be for around £60 million, so you combine that with the Wan-Bissaka money and Crystal Palace can go out and sign a pretty damn good forward or two. They would absolutely have to and they actually need to now regardless of whether they lose Zaha. But let’s look at this the way the line-up currently stands. Even with Zaha the club is lacking greatly up front. Of the 17 goals that the Crystal Palace attack scored last season, Zaha was responsible for 10 of them and Batshuayi was responsible for 5. Batshuayi has returned to Chelsea, so that just leaves Ayew and Benteke as the other two goalscorers, if you can call scoring 1 goal being a goalscorer. Out of this group, Benteke is the only one I can see turning it around. He has a proven track record in the premier league, granted he’s been miserable the past 2 seasons scoring 4 goals in 49 games. But before that he had scored 10+ goals in the last 5 Premier League seasons and even had 23 goals in a season with Aston Villa. He’s only 28 so there is still time for him to rebound and find his form. In the end, Palace need to spend money and buying a forward or two should be their number 1 priority. I think the team is good enough without the attack to survive relegation, but you don’t want to chance it.
Top Goalscorer Predictions:
Wilfried Zaha: 9 goals
Luka Milivojevic: 9 goals
Andros Townsend: 7 goals
Home Kit: I’m usually not a big fan of jersey’s made by Puma but this is one is pretty good. Always been a fan of the red and blue stripes and I like what the white accents add to the kit. Pretty good kit.
Credit: CPFC Shop
Away Kit: And of course a team can’t go 2 for 2 with their jersey’s. This kit is horrible. Looks like a damn training kit and not something they would actually be wearing during a match. Awful.
Credit: Footyheadlines