LONDON: Arsenal will look to keep pace at the top of the Premier League table when they host Crystal Palace in today's early kickoff in London.
The Gunners (12-4-4, 40 points) enter the weekend fourth in the Premier League table after a two-week break that allowed Mikel Arteta's team to escape for a brief training camp in Dubai.
The hiatus came following a run of three consecutive defeats in all competitions, including back-to-back league losses and a 2-0 FA Cup home defeat to Liverpool to start 2024.
The hope is the break allows Arteta's group to refocus and remain in the title race. Despite their recent form, Arsenal is only five points back of league-leading Liverpool.
"I think it gave us an opportunity to look at things with a bit of perspective and analyze what we've been doing, and I will take a lot of positives from the first six months of the competition," Arteta said of the getaway. "Even though results haven't gone our way in the last few games, when you look at what we have produced in terms of the Premier League and any other team, we are up there."
The Gunners have scored only five goals in their last seven matches in all competitions after scoring 18 times in the seven before that. Bukayo Saka leads Arsenal with six Premier League goals, and his front-line teammate Gabriel Jesus (knee) is expected to return after missing the Cup loss to Liverpool.
Meanwhile, Palace (5-9-6, 21 points) have to make sure they don't get dragged into a relegation battle after a lengthy slide that began in early November.
The Eagles had gone eight league matches without a victory before a 3-1 home win over Brentford on Dec. 30. They followed that by failing to score across 180 minutes in two FA Cup third-round matches against Everton, losing Wednesday's replay 1-0 at Goodison Park following a 0-0 home draw to start 2024.
The latter game saw Odsonne Edouard (calf) -- who leads Palace with six goals -- make his first start in more than a month. And while five-goal scorer Michael Olise remains out with a hamstring issue, the performance at Everton left Palace manager Roy Hodgson hopeful that goals would soon come.
"I've never taken a team to Arsenal thinking, 'This is an easy one for us.' It's always been up against it really, the underdog, which we still are in this match as well," Hodgson said. "But I thought there were a lot of aspects to our play on Wednesday night which were very satisfying. I thought we carried out our game plan pretty well and on another occasion, I think we'd have even got a result from that game." - REUTERS
