Crystal Palace Fan View: Next three games could define the season - starting with Middlesbrough

Palace’s game against Middlesbrough this weekend sees the start of a run of three games which could go a long way to deciding whether we’ll be playing Premier League football next season or will instead have the pleasure of an arduous trip to a cold, wet Ashton gate at some point just to have our eardrums desecrated by renditions of ‘The Wurzels’ songs that were terrible when they were released and, amazingly, sound no better out of time and tune, being bellowed from the stands. I digress…

To say this is a ‘big game’ is a redundant statement; every game between now and mid-May is huge for every single club in and around Palace and this one is no different. A win this weekend could act as a springboard for Palace though, we’ve got a couple of distinctly winnable games following the Boro game and a win this weekend could signal to us fans that the players have the fight, desire and ability to escape this.

In terms of selection, we could see Steve Mandanda finally return to the starting line-up. If he is fit, he has to start in my mind – his performances were far from astounding early on in the season but neither has he had the blame for a number of goals laid fairly and squarely at his feet in the same way that Wayne Hennessey has on one-too-many occasions this season. I was also impressed with the new signing Milivojevic and hope that he will make another appearance this weekend, his decent performance was overshadowed by the disappointment of the result against Stoke and I’m sure he’ll prove himself an excellent acquisition.

The timing of the recent break couldn’t have been better really, for a couple of reasons. The first of those is that it gives us time to properly integrate the January signings into the squad. Milivojevic has started just one game since joining the club, Sakho has yet to play a minute for the first team while Aanholt has played more or less every minute since signing on the dotted line. The little break would have given them chance to understand the system, understand the tactics and perhaps in Sakho’s case, get that little bit of match sharpness back – essentially getting everyone on an even footing for the run-in. It also gives Sam and the coaching staff the time to work on shape and tactics, potentially returning to look at the 3-5-2 system in more depth but certainly drilling importance of shape and discipline into the players, especially out of possession.

Middlesbrough will be just as desperate to win on Saturday as Crystal Palace will be, they are a couple of place and points above Palace but are certainly not safe and will inevitably see a game against a struggling Palace side as a real chance to put three more points on the board. They’re far from a free-scoring side but do have quality in attacking areas, Adama Traore for example has made a much more significant impact this season than he did at Villa last term. Alvaro Negredo is of course another threat despite his advancing years while Rudy Gestede opening his account for Boro last weekend at home to Oxford and could start this weekend.

A win on Saturday won’t take us above 16th placed Boro unless we win by 4 or more, the likelihood of which is on a par with finding a man dressed in a suit made entirely of bacon taking part in a vegan rally given our remarkable propensity to concede. Three points could lift us out of the relegation zone temporarily but more important than that, as I mentioned earlier, is the confidence that we could garner from a result. We have to treat this weekend as a fresh start, this is the start of a 13 game season which will determine which division we’ll be plying our trade next season.

The arithmetic is simply: the bottom 5 or 6 are so close that we need to pick up more points than three of the teams around us between now and the end of the season. Do that and we’ll be safe, I’m sure of it.