Saturday 8th March 2014 Selhurst Park 3pm kick off Match officials: Referee: Howard Webb Assistants: S Ledger and R West 4th Official: R East Form guide: Southampton: Southampton 0-3 Liverpool West Ham United 3-1 Southampton Sunderland 1-0 Southampton Hull City 0-1 Southampton Southampton 2-2 Stoke City Fulham 0-3 Southampton Saints go to Palace on the back of 3 straight defeats - this will be a very difficult match. Crystal Palace: Swansea 1-1 Crystal Palace Crystal Palace 0-2 Manchester United Crystal Palace 3-1 West Brom Arsenal 2-0 Crystal Palace Crystal Palace 1-0 Hull City Wigan 2-1 Crystal Palace Team news: Gaston Ramirez is pushing for a start after 2 good appearances off the bench. Clyne will want to play against his former club. Shaw and Lallana return after impressive performances for England. All players have returned unscathed from international duty as far as I know. For Palace a former Saint will be lining up for Palace - Puncheon who I hope will get a great reception from the Saints fans. Prediction: Not confident at all for this one. Puncheon to inspire Palace to a 2-1 victory. I think Palace will simply want it more.
It's not about "who wants it more", it almost never is. I'm not making any predictions because I really expected us to win at West Ham and Sunderland, so I won't tempt fate. However, the best team on the day will win, given reasonable good fortune. Wanting it more has little relevance, they're all pros. That said, Palace look a better side under Pulis than they did under Holloway. Are they a better side than Saints? Will they want it more? In the words of Junior Soprano, "I wanna **** Angie Dickinson, whaddayagonnado?"
I think this a big game for us. Obviously, Palace are in 'greater need' of the points and will be targeting home games as a way to get them, but it has been pretty disappointing in the last few weeks from our point of view. Our lack of ruthlessness in front of goal has been really costly, and I think Mauricio and the players will want to prove that they don't feel their season is over. Some of course are also playing for World Cup places. Going to be optimistic and say 2-1 Saints.
Bit concerned about Punch...wish we had him on the bench. We need to win this for team confidence. Some fans said we have nothing to play for, but I bet they didn't mean we needn't win at all. Got to get points from next couple of games...especially as we struggle against better sides.
Look at the record of teams fighting relegation on the last day against teams who are safe in mid-table. Sometimes it demonstrably is about who wants it more. If Palace feel they are desperate for these points, they will be dangerous.
I did a preview/interview/prediction thingy for a Palace fan site, read that here if you so wish: http://theeaglesbeak.com/2014/03/view-st-marys/
Betfair implied odds again: 25% Palace win 45% Saints win 30% Draw So the money has us with a 75% chance of not losing. I see that as reasonable. Most likely score 1-1 followed by 0-1. Vin
I think a teams motivation plays a big part in determining who comes out on top. To say it doesn't matter is absurd.
Evidence? Last season, QPR, Wigan and Reading went down. Reading managed 1 points from their last 3 games. Wigan managed 1, and QPR managed 0. Presumably they all "wanted" the points, but they didn't get them.
Palace needing the points more is irrelevant. Desire is no guarantee of performance...That's what I tell the girls anyway
You're going on the assumption that the mentioned teams were all motivated and believed they could stay up? Big assumption. You could also assume that morale was low, players had accepted defeat and were probably mentally lining up moves for next season. It would be difficult to build an evidence base on this- motivation is subjective and difficult to measure. Don't get me wrong I'm all for evidence based practice but some things just don't need to be shown by a mann-whitney test- its ****ing obvious!
Weren't Reading and QPR down a few games before the end of the seaaon? Playing Stoke at home for the last game was the perfect fixture, but we still couldn't win it...possibly because we had nothing to play for, same with Stoke.
If a thing is assumed to be obvious, it's seldom questioned. And the longer an assumption goes unquestioned, the more likely it is to be false. Look, football players are professional athletes. They all want to win, it's in their nature, or it should be. They're all motivated by the desire to win. But where is the evidence that teams under threat of relegation over perform as a result of their greater need for a result? I don't see any, and if it's "****ing obvious", then why don't the results show it?
Possibly. Or equally possibly, we were evenly matched. As evidenced by the single point separating us at the end of the season.
