Crystal Palace v Arsenal: Premier League – live!

The teams are out! Palace in their blue and red. Arsenal in their changed grey/black kit. Wilshere looks very focused. It’s a big night for him, playing for a new contract alongside Xhaka.

Re the preamble, this is the down side to Selhurst Park…

Roy talks!

We’re starting to see the best of Benteke. I’ve seen that in training, he can bring so many players into the game. If we’re going to get any points from this game, we’re going to have to play at our very best. But we can win it. We’ve got to believe that. We haven’t set the team up to rely on parking players in front of our team. We’re a ‘playing’ team.

Hodgson is insistent on calling tonight’s opponents “The Arsenal”, which I quite like.

Pape Souare is yet to make his league return after his horrific car crash last year and with Schlupp and Van Aanholt ahead of him in the pecking order, is not included in the squad, although he is at Selhurst Park tonight. There’s talk of a loan move in January, perhaps to Marseille (sans Evra) or Galatasaray.

Further reading:

In that 3-0 defeat earlier this year, here’s what Dominic Fifield had to say in the match report:

The spaces that gaped were duly exploited by the lung-bursting running of Andros Townsend and Wilfried Zaha, or clever manouevring of Yohan Cabaye and Jason Puncheon. Christian Benteke tormented Shkodran Mustafi in the air and it was invariably a Palace player who gathered the knockdown.

I seem to remember Sakho being fantastic that night as well. All of those Palace players start tonight, in what looks like a 4-4-1-1 formation, with Zaha just behind Benteke, who has returned from a one-match ban.

Arsenal line up in a 3-5-2/5-3-2, depending on how you view it. Interesting to see that Calum Chambers starts, his first appearance since the first league appearance of the season.

Crystal Palace: Speroni, Kelly, Tomkins, Dann, Schlupp, Townsend, Cabaye, Milivojevic, Loftus-Cheek, Zaha, Benteke.
Subs: Van Aanholt, Hennessey, McArthur, Fosu-Mensah, Sako, Puncheon, Riedewald.
Arsenal: Cech, Chambers, Koscielny, Mustafi, Bellerin, Xhaka, Wilshere, Kolasinac, Ozil, Sanchez, Lacazette.
Subs: Ospina, Walcott, Holding, Iwobi, Welbeck, Maitland-Niles, Coquelin.
Referee: Michael Oliver (Northumberland)

Selhurst Park is a wonderful stadium. Particularly for evening games when you can get a bite to eat at Tasty Jerk – a modest hut on its north-west corner serving some of the best food in south London – and its old school charm, wooden seats and bold primary colours are brought to life by some of the best fans in the Premier League. And I’m not necessarily talking about the ‘ultras’, who, for the most part, are excellent, but the wider fan base: they seem to have good balance of perspective – not a given these days – and don’t seem to get too excited when things are good, or too despondent when things are going south.

When they battered Arsenal 3-0 earlier this year in April, to finally but a bullet in Arsene Wenger’s top-four hopes and see themselves clear of danger, this was met with short-term delirium. Nothing more, nothing less. The week before they had lost to Southampton, the weekend after they drew with Leicester.

How must they be feeling now? Palace are currently fighting a relegation battle, but are on a eight-match unbeaten run in the league – their longest top-flight run since a 12-match stretch in October 1990 – and are up to 16th, with a game in hand. Under Roy Hodgson, they have been be reborn.

Arsenal fans famously struggle with this sense of balanced perspective, but this season, with Manchester City so many leagues ahead of everybody else, there is less pressure and subsequently, fewer dissenting voices. Just one win in five league matches would normally be bedlam on the forums, but as long as Arsenal are still in the hunt for a Champions League place, and giving the cups a good run, fans seem to be holding their tongue.

That said, this is a massive game for the Gunners, they are sixth, four points off Liverpool in fourth. They could do without another 3-0 defeat.

Kick-off: 8pm GMT.