Tottenham Hotspur host London rivals, Crystal Palace in a huge clash in the race for Premier League survival.
Victory will lift Tottenham up to 15th in the table, whilst Palace can go 13th with a win.
Team News
Djed Spence is again ruled out for Tottenham after he missed their 2-1 defeat at Fulham due to a calf injury.
Cristian Romero (suspension), Destiny Udogie, Rodrigo Bentancur (both hamstring), Lucas Bergvall, Ben Davies (both ankle), Mohammed Kudus (quad), James Maddison, Wilson Odobert (both ACL) and Dejan Kulusevski (knee) are still ruled out.
Palace will be without Maxence Lacroix after he was red carded in their 2-1 defeat at Manchester United last Sunday.
Jefferson Lerma (hamstring) will be available to start on the bench at best as he continues to rebuild his match fitness, but manager – Oliver Glasner is hopeful that he can come on as a late substitute.
Eddie Nketiah (muscle), Jean-Philippe Mateta and Cheick Doucoure (both knee) remain absent.
When is Kick-Off?
Tottenham host Palace at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Thursday 5 March at 8pm GMT, live on TNT Sports 1 in the UK.
Stat Attack
- Tottenham have won six of their last eight league meetings against Palace (W6, L2).
- Palace have won just one of their last 13 league visits to Tottenham (W1, D2, L10).
- Palace’s former winger, Eberechi Eze scored three goals in the Eagles’ last two visits to Tottenham.
- Failure to win this game would see Spurs set a new club record of 11 league matches without victory.
- Palace have claimed seven points in four London derbies away from home this season (W2, D1, L1).
Prediction
Now sat one point above the relegation zone after Wednesday evening’s results. Tottenham absolutely need to knuckle down and produce a more confident performance because they looked uninspired and passionless with little motivation at Fulham in the first half at least.
Igor Tudor though can take heart from the fact that they showed more fight in the second half but they ultimately lacked much bite in their end product, so a huge improvement is needed otherwise you’ve got to fear for their survival chances a bit more.
Palace meanwhile can move 10 points clear of the drop if they win here but despite this away fixture being quite a bogey trip for them, they can come here with improved confidence from recent results and could of got a point at Utd if not for Lacroix’s red card which cost them when ahead.
With Spurs, I just don’t see them winning this given their low confidence and injury crisis especially if Palace get on the front foot early and don’t lose their discipline, but you just have to think that it would be typical of the hosts to get something when they’re written off.
I however do think that Palace will be able to get over the line if they bring the same clinical quality that Fulham did against Tottenham last Sunday.
Prediction: Tottenham 1-2 Crystal Palace
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