Why Yacob vs Jedinak will define West Brom’s game against Crystal Palace

West Brom vs Crystal Palace

Date: 2nd November 2013

Venue: The Hawthorns

KO: 3pm

Team News: West Brom

West Brom will still be without Zoltan Gera (hamstring), Ben Foster (ankle) and George Thorne (ACL) for their home game against Palace. However, Morgan Amalfitano and Scott Sinclair will face late fitness tests to see if they’ve fully recovered from their knee and hamstring injuries respectfully. This will be a massive boost to Steve Clarke as West Brom have been struggling for goals over the past couple of weeks and the re-introduction of Sinclair will give West Brom some pace up the wing.

Team News: Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace, like West Brom, have plenty of injuries of their own to contend with. Palace’s caretaker manager will be without Jack Hunt, Jonathan Williams, Paddy McCarthy and most importantly, Glen Murray for their trip to The Hawthorns. Palace would go to end of the earth to get Murray back from injury at the moment, especially with the struggle for goals which is taking place at Selhurst Park .

Recent Form:

West Brom will go into this as massive favourites. This is for countless reasons, the main one being how poor Palace have been so far this season. The Eagles sit bottom of the Premier League after Sunderland beat Newcastle last weekend to take them off the foot of the table. Also, the fact Palace don’t have a manager sits against them and gives West Brom more incentive to go on and win this game. It is the type of game that could really kick-start the Baggies season.

Palace, on the other hand, need to stop letting goals in – they’ve conceded nine goals in their last three games. If Palace could get something out of this game, it, just like for The Baggies, could kick-start their season and if they can string a few decent performances together, it’ll raise spirits and push Palace up the table.

Players to Watch:

West Brom - Claudio Yacob

Although West Brom haven’t scored as many as they would’ve liked at this point in the season, they have also not conceded many. One of the main reasons for this is Claudio Yacob. The 26-year-old has been a man mountain for West Brom in the centre of midfield and has restricted any opposition from scoring against The Baggies. The Argentine midfielder has won 83% of his tackles this season to-date, that is 30 tackles won from a possible 36 – a quite superb statistic.

Crystal Palace - Mile Jedinak

When we talk about central midfielder’s that boss the game and are invaluable to their team, we think of Michael Carrick, Mathieu Flamini and Lucas Leiva, we don’t often think of Mile Jedinak, but the 29-year-old has been Palace’s player of the season so far by a country mile.

This is mainly down to how many times he’s cut out and intercepted opposition attacks and also not been afraid to keep on fighting for his team even when Palace may have been three or four goals down. Jedinak’s outstanding season to-date is shown perfectly by his tackle success rate – which stands at 87% (34/39). This, alongside Jedinak’s headed duel success rate of 84% (43/51), this shows how crucial and competitive Jedinak is.

Prediction:

No matter how much Palace fight during this game, West Brom are unbeaten in their last two home Premier League games, this includes good performances against Arsenal and Sunderland. Because of this, Palace won’t get anything from the game, especially when their strike-force simply isn’t firing and their defence doesn’t look like it can keep a clean sheet.

West Bromich Albion 3-0 Crystal Palace