Burnley v Crystal Palace

Burnley v Crystal Palace

This weekend sees the Clarets back home as we welcome Crystal Palace to Turf Moor. The Eagles travel to Lancashire in mixed form with three wins, two defeats and a draw from their last six games.

They have though won their last two games over strugglers Southend United and Luton Town and this has been very much the story of their season. Palace have had little problem putting the poorer clubs in the division to the sword, but really have struggled against the top teams, and this not surprisingly sees them sat in a mid-table position, occupying 11th place going into the game.

Palace are of course managed by Peter Taylor who a month ago quit as manager of the England under-21 team, stating that he was finding it difficult dividing his time between Palace and the under-21s, although results-wise not much has changed since then, Palace are as inconsistent as ever.

January at Selhurst Park was quiet in comparison to Turf Moor in terms of transfer activity, with Jonathan Macken leaving on a free to Derby, and former Millwall and Sheffield United winger Paul Ifill joining for £750,000.

From a Burnley perspective one might find it strange that the general consensus from Palace fans is that they are happy that Macken has departed. We know how good he can be having seen him on numerous occasions for Preston, but at Palace he was hampered with a succession of injuries, and that along with him reportedly being one of the highest earners at the club, and just 2 goals in 18 months there makes the freeing up of his wages more understandable.

Ifill on the other hand joined Palace in early January and has two goals to his name already, scoring in the 2-0 victory over Ipswich and scoring the winner at Roots Hall against Southend a fortnight ago. However Ifill then had to miss last weekend’s victory over Luton with an achilles injury and it is thought that the dangerous winger could well miss this weekend’s game.

He won’t be the only one either, Palace have a number of injury concerns going into the game with Burnley. Former Blackburn striker Shefki Kuqi will miss the game with a knee injury, as will midfielder Stuart Green and former Manchester City man Mark Kennedy, and another potential danger man, Joby McAnuff is also doubtful.

As always though with Palace at this level there is plenty of firepower up-front. Clinton Morrison scored both goals last weekend to see off Luton, putting an end to a sequence of 11 games without a goal for him. Great, just what we need, him coming into form. The brace for Morrison took him to 8 goals for the season.

Should Palace stick with the same team that beat Luton then it will be Dougie Freedman partnering Morrison up top, with former Burnley target Jamie Scowcroft possibly joining the pair up front to make a three-pronged attack.

As for the Clarets, well there’s no point harping on about our current run, we need to build on Saturday’s point at Colchester. We’re still ten points away from the 50 point mark that usually ensures safety and we need to ensure we get these points as soon as possible before our very difficult April.

With the exception of Preston this month, the rest of the games in March really are games in which we should be picking points up from. The games in April don’t bear thinking about if we keep our current form up and this is going to be a big month for us, make no bones about it.

Let’s get back to winning ways.

Up the Clarets.