Crystal Palace vs Liverpool

Saturday’s Premier League action gets underway at Selhurst Park as out-of-sorts Crystal Palace and high-flying Liverpool lock horns in contrasting circumstances.

Crystal Palace’s underwhelming spell of form continued in midweek Premier League action as a 2-0 home defeat to Bournemouth extended their winless league run to four games (D1, L3), demoting them to 14th in the standings. A lack of firepower up top continues to trouble manager Roy Hodgson, with his side lamenting the division’s second-worst scoring record (14), only bettering rock-bottom Sheffield United’s 11-goal tally. Palace’s scoring woes have been particularly troubling at Selhurst Park, where they’ve failed to get on the scoresheet in four of their seven top-flight outings this season. Their inability to score goals has inevitably led to the club’s lowest five-point tally on home turf at this stage of a league campaign since 2000/01.

In stark contrast to Palace’s embarrassing scoring record, Liverpool head into proceedings as the second-best scoring side in the Premier League with 34 goals. Jurgen Klopp’s men have found the back of the net in 32 consecutive matches across all competitions in the build-up to this fixture and are only two games short of equalling the club’s longest-ever scoring run of 34 outings set between April and December 2021. However, the ‘Reds’ would be well advised to take the field with cautious optimism, considering they had gone winless on four successive top-flight travels (D3, L1) before a 2-0 midweek victory at Sheffield United. On a more positive note, before last season’s pair of low-scoring draws, Liverpool had won ten Premier League encounters against Palace on the trot.