Jesus’ return is nice, Palace fans are optimistic and their xG form suggests a reason for that… – Suburban Gooners

I’m going to do my usual look at how Palace fans are feeling at the moment ahead of our weekend game, as well as a bit about their game last night against Larnaca (which I think is more famous for its party town history than its football team, but there you go), but before that, how about the interview in The Standard with Gabriel Jesus in which he says he’s feeling good and looking forward to the latter stages of his rehabilitation and a return to the field soon. How soon that will happen remains to be seen, with even him saying he needs to stop himself from overdoing it as he’s now on the training grounds. A quick Google search of a torn ACL puts the time frame between nine and 12 months, so we’re right in the middle of that and given he’s 28 and not getting young, any setback now could have longer damage than any potential involvement this season.

It’s a fascinating case because I think most of us have sadly moved on from him, but as Simon Collings’ article points out, it’s easy to forget that before injuring his knee in that United FA Cup match last January, he was on a run of six goals in seven games. I had completely forgotten about that and I think I had even mentioned here and on social media that my feeling was that a return to Brazil was probably what he should be looking at this season. After all, he’s most likely fallen down the pecking order with Kai and Big Vik fighting for that center spot and Merino knocking into the background with his goal. Gabriel Jesus can play in the top three, that’s for sure, but he’s not ahead of Saka, Martinelli, Trossard, Madueke and probably even Eze at this stage. But at 28, he’s not a flash of color and that goal return before he was injured is worth considering before thinking he’s done. He doesn’t think he’s at Arsenal and good job to the guys at Arseblog for translating an article where he says he still wants to win things at Arsenal. nice words, the right words, but I guess if there was an offer in January Arsenal would consider it. We have a great team as it is, but with players already not in the match day squad and with his wages as they are, I suspect Arsenal could look to cash in on an asset – however nice he may be.

Until we get a deal he will be reinstated and it just shows more strength in depth that we have at the club and I wonder if that is something Palace will be wary of on Sunday. They were beaten in Larnaca last night and although I didn’t watch the match, I looked at the result and the stats and it looks like they had a lot of dominance in the match and played against a pretty complete team. Henderson, Guehi, Lacrooix, Munoz, Mitchell, Sarr and Mateta are all regulars for the Eagles and even though Glasner made substitutions from 71 minutes onwards, these are still guys who play on a Thursday night before playing on Sunday. This is something our team is used to and our depth has been able to deal with, but I wonder how Palace react to this? I hope they are feeling the fatigue while we have had two extra nights off and with Bernardo Silva complaining about it in the game we played against City (they had no problems the previous season when we were in Italy two days after they were playing at home before going to Manchester, but there you go) you know it is having an impact on these finely tuned athletes. Even if it’s only a 5% difference in our favor, it works for me.

As for their fans, a quick check of a few forums reveals a small gap between fans. Based on the 30 or so predictions I’ve read, there’s a mix of “We’ll draw” and “it’s not a good time for us to play them given our form”, with more of a tendency towards a draw than a defeat. I can kind of understand that. We have to remember that Palace were in a crazy period of invincibility before being beaten at Everton, but this defeat last night is now turning into a ‘three winless’ jibe against the FA Cup holders. As usual from Palace fans, I’ve seen a bit of the old ‘as long as we’re good on the corners, they can’t hurt us’ and while I hope the Palace coaching staff will apply the same principle, I’m not naive enough to believe it.

We all know this is a good Palace team, a well-drilled Palace team, who create a lot of chances with their mid-block approach who gets a lot of chances when they jump back and forth quickly. Hell, these are by far the current xG leaderboard leaders:

I hope this screenshot pops up and you can see it on FBref.com, but what it shows you is that Arsenal are coming up against a team that knows where the goal is and I think we’re going to give up a few chances on Sunday in the hunt for goals. This could turn this into a transition game and create more chances for us, but I’ll save any deeper tactical analysis for the weekend.

For now, we’ll wait to hear from Mikel and Oliver on team news and while ours is hopefully positive, it will be interesting to see what Glasner hints he might do given Palace have – unusually for them – a disadvantage playing a European side this time around, due to their own involvement in the midweek competition.

So I’m going to leave it there and come back to you tomorrow with other thoughts following the press conferences. Have a good one.