Nwaneri the striker, Rice fit – let’s win this…

Morning all.

We face Crystal Palace this evening in the League Cup. In previous rounds, Mikel Arteta has rotated his players. In the third round, a home fixture against Bolton, four teenagers – including 16-year-old goalkeeper Jack Porter started with a further two coming off the bench. In the last round match, away at Preston against a stronger opposition, two teenagers started with two on the bench.

Along with Porter, Tommy Setford, Ethan Nwaneri, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ayden Heaven, Josh Nichols, Maldini Kacurri and Ismeal Kabia enjoyed minutes on the pitch. Lewis-Skelly and Nwaneri might be teenagers but as far as their football goes, they both play beyond their years in my opinion.

Sterling, Jesus, Kiwior, Jorginho and Zinchenko, if fit, could all start tonight as they have in the previous two rounds but bearing in mind we’re up against a Premier League club, Arteta might field a stronger side this time around.

Matt Turner is likely to be in goal for Palace and Nketiah is probably desperate to start against his old club. Eager to score I’m sure.

Talking of strikers, Mikel Arteta served up a bit of surprise yesterday during his press conference as he was asked about Ethan Nwaneri and where he could end up positionally.

Nine. When he’s got the goal in front of him, he just looks at the goal. He has a tremendous ability to put the ball into the back of the net.

Well played him there now I say… Tongue in cheek of course because his senior career is just kicking off. A bit like Myles Lewis-Skelly really who like Bukayo Saka, could very well end up on the wing having started out playing at fullback.

Will Mikel Arteta make wholesale changes tomorrow:

We’ll decide that in the morning in relation to how the squad is, obviously the relevance of the match and where we are in the quarter-finals, it becomes a very important match. We’ll decide the best team to win it.

Declan Rice is fine but Riccardo Calafiori, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Ben White and Takehiro Tomiyasu are ruled out again. So, we have all our attacking players and midfielders available but we’re just a bit short of options across the back line. Whether Setford or David Raya starts this one is anyone’s guess. Neto of course is cup-tied but I’m sure he’ll get his chance in the FA Cup next month.

Crystal Palace are without the suspended Daniel Munoz. Joel Ward, Franco Umeh-Chibueze, Adam Wharton, Matheus França de Oliveira and Chadi Riad Dnanou are expected to miss out. Eberechi Eze is also a doubt.

What to expect from Crystal Palace this evening?

Adrian Clarke, writing in the official match-day programme:

Crystal Palace deploy a very settled 3-4-2-1 formation under Oliver Glasner. On the ball the astute Austrian pushes both wingbacks high and wide as a matter of course, forming a five-man attack, but when possession is lost, the Eagles quickly contract into a 5-4-1.

Long passes from back to front are often encouraged by the Palace head coach, who likes to use target man Jean-Phillipe Mateta as an outlet. In recent weeks he has been terrific at holding the ball up for supporting runners, with twin No.10s Eberechi Eze and Ismaila Sarr often quite elusive in those half-space pockets. Making sure those three do not combine in close quarters from direct attacks is important for us in this cup tie.

In the last round, Palace beat Aston Villa with 35% possession and 2 shots out of 12 on target. Villa had 17 shots, 9 on target and just one goal. No one will remember the stats though, just the result.

The League Cup isn’t a competition high on the list of fans priorities at the beginning of the season I’m sure but I think it’s important that we go all out to win tonight’s match with a strong and convincing performance. The players need it and they need goals too. They need what would be a confidence boosting victory. This squad needs to feel what it’s like to win something together and the club as a whole could really do with adding a trophy to its cabinet regardless of how big or small.

The last time these two sides met was back in January of this year. Roy Hodgson was the Palace manager back then and we’d been on a run of three games without a win. Palace must have thought it was a good time to play us but ended up on the receiving end of a 5-0 thrashing.

I really want to believe that all the chances to score which the players have missed this season is just bad luck. That the likes of Odegaard, Havertz, Martinelli and Trossard are just minutes or a different pair of boots away from finding not only the target, but the back of the net. That both Jesus and Sterling, when they have a chance, they take it too. Ok, the last bit might be a stretch to far but you get my point.

This group of players are too good to be struggling as they have been at times this season. They’re too good to be struggling to break down an awfully negative team like Everton. Remember, it wasn’t long ago that we were beating Monaco and Sporting Lisbon comfortably and both are better than many of the Premier League clubs.

So let’s go and beat Palace and keep our chances of making it to Wembley alive.

Catch up in the comments..