Season Preview - Crystal Palace.

What a season Crystal Palace had last time around. At the start, everyone expected and predicted Crystal Palace to go down; how wrong they were. Crystal Palace shocked everyone by managing to achieve 11^th place, just 4 points off a top half finish. However, this season will be even tougher for Crystal Palace and every team defeated by The Eagles will be out for revenge, making this season incredibly difficult.

Transfers.

Last summer, Crystal Palace had a fairly bad window signing loads of players but none of a sufficient quality other than Jason Puncheon. Luckily for Palace, despite the flops of Dobbie, Campana, Grandin, Hunt, Kebe and Alexander, Dwight Gayle, Mariappa, Bannan, Thomas and Chamakh all seemed to have minor-successful seasons, with Dwight Gayle arguably ending Liverpool’s title hopes with two goals at Selhurst Park.

This season has seen Crystal Palace miss out on a fair few targets, most notably Steven Caulker who ended up going to play with his former manager at QPR. Luckily for Crystal Palace, Frazier Campbell signed providing depth up front and all of the dead wood that Crystal Palace had has now gone. In terms of other players coming into Palace, they have not really been linked with anyone and most Palace fans should brace themselves for a boring window with hardly any incomings and no more outgoings.

Predicted Line-up.

Crystal Palace have an ok side. Their forwards are fairly decent; they have two quality wingers, an average defence and a fantastic keeper. I expect Palace to do fairly well with this squad and this line-up may even change a couple of times during the course of the season with rotation options.

Squad Depth.

Crystal Palace actually have an ok squad depth. They have an ok winger in Jerome Thomas, a quality midfielder/defender in Joe Ledley, two good forwards in Dwight Gayle and Marouane Chamakh and a great goalkeeper in Wayne Hennessey. With this amount of quality, Palace may be able to achieve a top half finish. Then again, everyone said the same about Norwich and look where they are now.

Final Predicted Finish: 11^th.

Although I think that Crystal Palace have a good squad, I just don’t think that they will be able to achieve a top half finish as most top half sides like Stoke and Southampton should be able to defeat them. However, there is definitely room for a shock and Crystal Palace could find themselves outsiders for a Europa League spot if they manage to keep hold of their stars and sign a few quality players before the window closes with a bit of good luck thrown in.

Predicted Key Player: Julian Speroni.

Crystal Palace enjoyed a fantastic campaign last season and most of it was down to the heroics of Julian Speroni. He garnered a reputation for fantastic saves and I for one expect this reputation to be maintained. Speroni will also be a key player for Crystal Palace as he is an excellent communicator; he controls Palace’s defence and monitors every single move that happens during the course of a match. Speroni is the type of keeper any club would want and Palace should feel lucky they have tied him down to a new contract.

By @nathan_said