FA Cup Preview: Crystal Palace vs Tottenham

This weekend sees Crystal Palace travel a few short miles to face Tottenham in the FA Cup for a place in the sixth round. While Tottenham have been climbing the table in the past few weeks the South London side have ironically been sliding ever southwards and when it comes to form it doesn’t make pretty reading for Palace fans. While Tottenham sit second in the form table, Palace sit second bottom, having picked up 1 point from the last 6, an incredible 14 less than Spurs. However, naturally, I am not without hope and there is reason for optimism when it comes to Palace’s changes on Sunday.

One of those reasons goes by the name of Yannick Bolasie. Palace haven’t won since his injury in mid-December and perhaps that is the most telling thing to come out of our poor run. He brings dynamism to the team and reduces the workload on the other side of Zaha - the two of them working in tandem together can be a wonderful thing to behold and without Bolasie on the pitch we have visibly struggled. It’s the type of player Yannick is that benefits the team so much, he’s a powerful player, running at players and taking them on draws them out of position and his unpredictability opens up space in other areas of the pitch. He is returning from injury so he may not be his old self right away, we must remember that, but boy it’ll be good to have him back.

It’s not just Yannick returning though – Dwight Gayle, Joe Ledley and Bakary Sako could all feature and with James McArthur and Jason Puncheon out Ledley’s return will be of particular benefit to Pardew. If nothing else the returning quartet give us options from the bench and a degree of increased competition in the side, two things which can only be a good thing for the team as a whole.

Participation in the Europa league may well aid Palace’s cause as well. Spurs travelled to Fiorentina on Thursday evening and we’re all aware of the ‘Europa league hangover’ as a result of the additional travelling and game time. However the statistics say Mauricio Pochettino’s men haven’t struggled with this as much as seasons gone by, they’ve lost only one premier league game following a Thursday night fixture out of six this season and it was following a Europa league fixture that Spurs beat Palace back in September. Hopefully history won’t repeat itself.

For all Palace’s domestic troubles, the FA Cup seems to have provided something of a release for Palace. We’ve won four of our last five FA Cup away games which is a promising statistic if nothing else and beat Southampton after shipping three goals to Chelsea and beat Stoke after we’d shipped three goals to Tottenham. Maybe, just maybe, the team can play with the freedom of knowing that there’s nothing riding on this, as much as everyone will want to get through to the next round it’s not as vital as getting to 40 points.

All that being said Tottenham have to go into the game as favourites, and rightly so. They have been one of the best and most consistent sides in the Premier League this season, producing some of the best football we’ve seen, with arguably the youngest and most promising side in the league as well. I don’t see us outscoring Tottenham, but if we can keep a clean sheet we could just nick a goal or two and see ourselves through to the sixth round of this year’s FA Cup and one step closer to Wembley.