Bournemouth vs Crystal Palace Prediction

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Bournemouth vs Crystal Palace Prediction Match Overview

14th-placed Bournemouth entertain 11th-placed Crystal Palace in this round of New Year’s Eve fixtures. Bournemouth come into this game on the back of a 2-0 away defeat to Chelsea which, quite frankly, could have been a lot worse after they found themselves 2-0 down within the opening 25 minutes. To their credit, the Cherries played much better in the second half but were unable to find a goal to bring them back into the match, although Chelsea were playing within themselves somewhat. Unfortunately, this was Bournemouth’s fourth defeat in their last five matches, a defeat which sees them looking nervously over their shoulders at the teams in and around the relegation zone. Fortunately for Bournemouth, every other club who finds themselves in a precarious position at this stage of the season also lost, so the damage wasn’t significant.

Crystal Palace had a torrid time in their London derby against Fulham. Falling behind in the 31st minute courtesy of a goal from Bobby Reid, they found themselves in further trouble just three minutes later after Tyrick Mitchell was shown a straight red card. Tomkins earned himself a second yellow card in the 57th minute and with Palace down to 9 men, Fulham took full advantage and emerged with a comfortable 3-0 victory. While it wouldn’t be fair to suggest that Palace are in the midst of a disappointing Premier League campaign, they have lost 3 of their last 5 games and failed to score in each of them, which must be disconcerting.

Bournemouth vs Crystal Palace Team News

Injuries and Suspensions

Might Not Play: Tavernier (Bournemouth)

Will Not Play: Neto, Brooks (Bournemouth); Ferguson, Johnstone, McArthur, Tomkins (Crystal Palace)

Possible Lineups

Bournemouth (4-4-2): Mark Travers; Jordan Zemura, Marcos Senesi, Chris Mepham, Adam Smith; Philip Billing, Lewis Cook, Jefferson Lerma, Marcus Tavernier; Dominic Solanke, Kieffer Moore

Crystal Palace (4-3-3): Vicente Guaita; Tyrick Mitchell, Marc Guehi, Joachim Andersen, Nathaniel Clyne; Cheick Doucoure, Michael Olise, Jeffrey Schlupp; Eberechi Eze, Wilfried Zaha, Odsonne Edouard

Bournemouth vs Crystal Palace Prediction Analysis

The Importance of Retaining Possession

While the ability to retain possession is important in any football match, in a match like this it takes on an added importance because both teams generally are set up to press and counter-press, and move the ball in a risky, direct manner. This isn’t a disparaging assessment of the two sides – it’s most likely the most effective method for them to generate chances in a difficult league in which they often come up against better-resourced teams. Crystal Palace are guilty of being dispossessed more than any other team in the Premier League, and they do tend to give the ball away a lot. They will endeavour to be more careful here against a Bournemouth side who look to get the ball to their frontmen as quickly as possible and have a serviceable target man in the form of Kieffer Moore to do just that. Bournemouth, for their part, mustn’t fall into the trap of trying to play Hollywood balls and handing the ball straight back to Palace.

Bournemouth in particular must avoid this game becoming an end-to-end proposition because Crystal Palace are proficient at attacking into space with the likes of Zaha and Eze at their best while driving at defences looking to create opportunities both for themselves and others. This will perhaps necessitate the introduction of an additional centre back to ensure that they always have a spare man available to shut down these potentially profitable avenues of attack.

Stretching the Play

Ordinarily, both sides play with a combative midfield three which are primarily tasked with winning the ball back quickly and spreading the play out wide where in Palace’s case their more talented attackers play and in Bournemouth’s case where they have players capable of attacking space playing off Kieffer Moore. Their respective gameplans are expected to actually be fairly similar in nature and because of this, each side will be acutely aware of what the other is trying to accomplish. This could lead to both sides actually allowing the other their space out wide and to stretch the play at times to catch them out of position when they win the ball back. Essentially, this can be used as a trap by both sides, who can then enjoy the extra space afforded to them in transition.

Beat the Bookmaker Bournemouth vs Crystal Palace Prediction

We feel that both sides will cancel each other out here in what will, at times, be something of a scrappy affair. Generally speaking, Palace would appear to have the edge in terms of quality, particularly in the attacking third, but Bournemouth have home advantage here and Palace will be wary of their counter-attacking threat. While we don’t anticipate a chess match, we do feel this will be a relatively low-scoring affair owing to their respective teams’ struggles in front of goal this season. Neither side is averaging over a goal per game and we see no reason to suggest that either side will buck that trend here.

Bournemouth 1-1 Crystal Palace

Beat the Bookmaker Bournemouth vs Crystal Palace Prediction – Draw Odds: