Chelsea vs Crystal Palace
English Premier League
Date: Saturday 14th August 2021
Kick off at 15:00 UK/ 16:00 CET
Venue: Stamford Bridge (London).
Chelsea will be the clear favourites to win this London derby and the Champions League winners will now want to add a league title to their new purpose under Thomas Tuchel.
Chelsea come into this first game of the season in good spirits as they beat Villarreal in the UEFA Super Cup on penalties in Belfast after the teams had drawn the game 1-1. It’s another trophy for the Blues and that will just install a winning mentality at the club.
The big news for Chelsea is that they have signed Romelu Lukaku from Inter Milan for just over £100m. Given that Lukaku has been superb in Italy and that Chelsea needed a quality goal scoring forward this seems like the perfect deal for the club.
Chelsea finished 4th last season, but Tuchel only managed the club for half of that as he came into the team only from February after Frank Lampard was sacked and since then Chelsea have looked fantastic.
It’s all change at Crystal Palace because legendary manager Roy Hodgson has retired from the game. The new manager is Arsenal and French legend Patrick Vieira, and he did very well with Nice in his time there, only at the end did it sour.
Palace are trying to be clever with their signings and they did bring in former Chelsea player Marc Guehi so that could be interesting. The Eagles have also snapped up Joachim Andersen from Lyon.
Chelsea vs Crystal Palace: Head-to-Head
- Last season Chelsea won this fixture 4-0.
- Chelsea have scored 11 goals past Crystal Palace in their last 3 games.
- Chelsea have won the last seven meetings against Crystal Palace with the last victory for Palace coming back in 2017.
Chelsea vs Crystal Palace: Prediction
Chelsea are big odds on to win the game at around 1/4 so we need to look into different markets. Even though Lukaku is finalising his move to the club he surely won’t play at the weekend but there is a wealth of players at the club who can score.
In past fixture against Palace Jorginho has scored twice and so has Christian Pulisic. Timo Werner needs to up his game with Lukaku challenging for that place and maybe he will try even harder to convince why he should be starting.
Palace can have their chances too and they will want to impress their new manager, but this is a very tough fixture for them to start with and we can only see a Chelsea victory here