da heads bet： Upon a weekend in which a Chelsea win could, Manchester City excepted, re-congest the Premier League’s top five with just six points separating second and fifth, Liverpool face the daunting task of instigating the top fight action at Selhurst Park in Saturday’s 12.30pm kickoff.
da esoccer bet： The Reds are 13 places and 33 points better off than Crystal Palace in the table, but they know more than anybody the grave dangers of underestimating a visit to the antiquated South London ground.
Of course, what came to be dubbed ‘Crystambul’ is the obvious example; as Brendan Rodgers’ side looked to improve their title chances by further increasing their goal tally despite already going three goals up at Selhurst Park, the Eagles suddenly produced an incredible three-goal comeback – essentially closing the book on the 2013/14 Premier League title race with three strikes from the 79th minute onwards.
The campaign after, the Selhurst curse struck again; this time Palace going one step better to record a shock 3-1 win, the decisive goals scored in the final twelve minutes.
The prevailing narrative was one of those results typifying Liverpool’s intrinsic flaws under Rodgers; an almost dogmatic passing philosophy that created the kind of soft underbelly Palace had the perfect equilibrium of aggression, directness and sheer speed to regularly rip through on the counter-attack.
Yet, Liverpool are hardly the first major club to struggle in the hostile atmosphere at Selhurst Park, or fall victim to a traditional style of football that has become increasingly idiosyncratic in the modern game.
Just two weeks ago, Gary Neville revealed how he often feared going to Selhurst Park during his playing days – fittingly just before Manchester United went two goals down in an abysmal first half performance – and the uniqueness of Palace’s home has only become more evident then.
It remains one of the few historic grounds in the Premier League, where the fans can reach out and touch the pitch’s most peripheral blades of grass, and where a large section of uniformed, flag-waving, militant supporters acts as the terrace jukebox with bass amp included; leading the chants and bouncing with such relentlessness that the whole stadium is never quite inanimate.
In fact, since Palace returned to the Premier League in summer 2013, not a single member of the Premier League’s big six have produced a perfect record at Selhurst Park. That is to say, neither Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United or Tottenham have won on all of their visits there. And perhaps even more tellingly, five of those six have all lost there within the last four seasons – the only exception being the Red Devils.
That still constitutes just 21 points gained – six victories and three draws – from 29 games. But Palace have been defiant in defeat as well; a 3-0 defeat to Chelsea in 2014/15 is the only occasion since their top flight return that they’ve lost a home game to a member of the big six by more than two goals, while just six of their 20 losses have been by more than one goal.
Amid an era in which the gap between the top teams and the rest of the Premier League appears to be only growing wider, that’s an incredibly solid record – even this season, which will probably be remembered most for top six dominance, Roy Hodgson’s relegation-threatened side have beaten reigning champions Chelsea and held the impending champions, Pep Guardiola’s free-scoring, sensationally dominant Manchester City side, to a scoreless draw.
And thus, there are positives and negatives for Liverpool to take into Saturday’s game. The positive is that an obstacle initially prescribed as a Liverpool-specific problem is by no means exclusive to them; the negative though, is how widespread the Selhurst curse appears to be and how no top Premier League side has found a consistent solution to winning there.
In some ways then, as the argument for Liverpool being the biggest threat to City’s title threat next season continues to grow its army of endorsers, this Saturday is arguably a bigger test than their Champions League meeting with the Citizens next week.
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