Crystal Palace travel to Goodison Park to face an in-form Everton side on Sunday and they are sweating on the fitness of star man Wilfried Zaha. The Eagles have become increasingly reliant on the Ivorian forward and they can ill afford to see him sidelined. He returned home early from international duty with a thigh problem similar to that which ruled him out of last month’s home defeat against Southampton. Palace’s record without Zaha is positively abysmal and fans will pray that he recovers in time to face Marco Silva’s men at the weekend.
The Eagles have not won a game without Zaha since they beat a dreadful Sunderland side 3-2 in September 2016. Every time he misses out with injury, they suffer an alarming drop in form and struggle for creativity. Yet when he starts he injects pace, dynamism, vitality and unpredictability into the Palace attack, and many opposition defenders simply cannot live with him. Everton have the sort of shaky backline that he could eviscerate, so he would give everyone at the club a huge boost if he were to declare himself fit for the game.
Crystal Palace have lost twice on the bounce and they are 14thin the table, with five defeats in eight games. That sort of form would be more worrying if the bottom three – Cardiff, Newcastle and Huddersfield – were not playing so atrociously, but they really need to start putting more points on the board. The bookmakers listed at OddsMarket all make Everton the odds-on favourites to beat Palace at the weekend, but the Toffees are a pretty inconsistent bunch. They are strong going forwards, but they leave gaps at the back, and Crystal Palace certainly have a chance of grabbing a result if Zaha is fit enough to weave his magic.
The game will take place live on Sky Sports at 4pm and it is the only fixture on Sunday. That means it is sure to attract a huge TV audience and betting will probably go through the roof. The soaring popularity of the Premier League has made betting on football a real phenomenon, as fans are keen to boost their enjoyment of matches and also to turn their footballing expertise into a profit. But it can be difficult knowing which betting options to choose, where to go for the most attractive odds and how to beat the bookmakers.
There are some great free resources available online, and OddsMarket is a perfect example. Every week, expert tipsters and sports writers preview all the Premiership games via articles and video content. They discuss the form of the various teams, injury concerns and statistical and head-to-head trends, before offering their predictions. They advise on the different betting types, including Asian handicaps, goals markets and intriguing combinations, to ensure you get more value and cover yourself well. You are then able to make your own educated decisions from a position of strength.
The site has an odds comparison tool, allowing you to see which of the leading bookmakers is offering the most attractive prices on the game you want to bet on. It also shows you the line history, so you can see which bets are popular among the public. You can benefit from a bet tracker, a bet calculator, live scores and other tools, while reading the articles, watching the videos and interacting with fellow punters on the forum. There is not catch, as this is a free site, so it could be worth adding to your repertoire if you are thinking of placing bets on Crystal Palace and their rivals over the course of the Premiership campaign.
