J-Lo at Selhurst Park!
Aug 23, 2024
That's Julen Lopetegui BTW!
EPL 24/25:
That's Entertainment
I wrote a piece last season about the number of goals in the EPL and how many top teams cannot defend and you can access that on the clubgowi website.
Premier League goals have increased season upon season since 2020-21 and took a quantum step up from 22/23 last season with an additional 0.42 goals across the 380 fixtures. That is an insane number, an extra 175 goals, which is over 4.6 per round. This is why so many of my EPL bets are based around goals and we have done so well with them, these still contain value, maybe the only true value on markets that have been picked clean by traders, bettors and syndicates by the time that games in the most watched league in the world kick off .
Crystal Palace- West Ham United
In addition to my detailed preseason notes on all teams, ahead of Brentford-Palace last Sunday I wrote .........
Crystal Palace boss Oliver Glasner has given a warning that his players who were on international duty this summer are not yet fully up to speed and will need another 10-14 days. Brentford have had Flekken, Pinnock, Norgaard, Jensen and Damsgaard back much longer from the Euros and Copa America and they should be as advanced as anyone else in the home squad. Ivan Toney, is in a similar position to the Palace guys, but hit the ground running after his 8.5 month suspension, so I doubt a three week break after the Euros is going to have put him too far behind the rest. Whether he will start , or even play or not it is impossible to know, but Thomas Frank said on Friday that Ivan, new signing Fabio Carvalho and Keane Lewis Potter were available. They are still without both starting fullbacks and will be until after the first international break. That means that today, they will have their back up on the right and someone "out of position" on the left, I say OOP but it is so long now (just over 11 months !) that the Bees have had a legitimate LB that it feels almost natural.
Bees have lost record signing Igor Thiago until Christmas, but offensively, Mbeumo, Wissa, Schade, KLP, Carvalho and Toney give them insane, very fluid and speedy options. The first three named scored in Brentford's final warm up game which was a 4-4 draw with Wolfsburg and Toney looked sharp off the bench and almost scored from 40m out, the Bees had some very inventive set plays and might have scored two more, but defensively they were suspect, having said that, two of the Wolves goals were from long range. That is kind of where I think we are at, hard to see Brentford keeping a clean sheet, but they feel full of goals.
I enjoyed the game, it could have ended all square, but Brentford took the points in a 2-1 win and were 3-1 for BC's, won xG and actually defended well. Eberechi Eze did put the ball in the net from a long range free kick which was disallowed and VAR had a look and social media had a field day with that, but I am not sure why. I sit right in line with that at the Gtech and we all heard the whistle before the ball hit the net, so it could never have been given and should not even have been reviewed and once again, it took ages!
Palace were "ok" , they do play far more openly under Glasner, but they were pretty physical which surprised me and Daichi Kamada should have had three yellow cards! He has had three in his last five league starts and was caught out by the pace of the EPL at times and feels like an incident about to happen.
When Eze and Michael Olise, who has already left for Bayern Munich, played together last season (13 games) Palace scored an average of 2.69 goals(!), in the other 25 games, just 0.88 gpg! They kind of hit that average last week and it has to be a concern and we do not know if Eze will be distracted this week as we enter the final game of the transfer window, although interest does seem to have cooled in the last few days.
West Ham and new head coach Julen Lopetegui will have been hugely disappointed by their 2-1 home defeat to Villa last weekend, they had two big chances to snatch a draw at the end, but that would have been unjust and the Hammers got what they deserved for a lacklustre showing. They are probably happy to be on the road today and they have scored 2+ goals in 5 of their last 7 London derby away games which includes two trips to Selhurst Park where they scored 5 and wins over Arsenal and Tottenham. The two h2h meetings here in SE London with the Eagles both produced 7 goals and perhaps I should mention that Palace scored 9 of those, but it was the Olise/Eze show in the most recent, with Olise the star performer and United do not have to concern themselves with him today.
Paqueta, Kudus, Antonio, Bowen, Fullkrug, Summerville and Ings give the Hammers a lot of offensive options and with big money spent in this window, another no show is not going to go down well in the London Stadium boardroom and I am expecting far more energy and invention today and Palace will give them chances.
2.25 units West Ham United to score "over" 1.5 goals @ 2.74 asian line.