Tottenham vs Crystal Palace Odds
| Tottenham Odds | -200 |
| Crystal Palace Odds | +550 |
| Draw | +333 |
| Over / Under | 2.5 -188 / +144 |
Tottenham Hotspur will look to get their pursuit of a top-four finish back on track on Saturday when they welcome a Crystal Palace side trying to open manager Oliver Glasner's tenure with back-to-back victories.
Spurs were dealt a 2-1 home defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers two weekends ago, sealing a deserved season series sweep for the Midlanders. As for Tottenham, they sank five points behind fourth-place Aston Villa in their pursuit of a place in next season's UEFA Champions League.
Palace earned an emphatic 3-0 home win over Burnley in Glasner's managerial debut, an occasion made far easier when Burnley were reduced to 10 men late in the first half, and they now enter the weekend eight points clear of the relegation line.
Spurs won the previous league meeting 2-1 back on Oct. 27, with Son Heung-Min's 66th-minute tally holding up as the eventual match winner.
Let's get into my Tottenham vs Crystal Palace preview.
Tottenham
Chelsea's League Cup Final date with Liverpool last Sunday forced the postponement of a Derby fixture with Spurs that had been scheduled for last Friday, meaning Ange Postecoglou's squad comes into this fixture on 14 days of rest.
Whether that breather is a blessing depends on your perspective. The time off has allowed for the possibility that defenders Destiny Udogie and Pedro Porro will only miss one game — that Wolves defeat — to their respective injuries. And the break may have made it easier to scout the tendencies of the new Palace manager they'll be facing for the first time.
Then again, the whole of 2024 so far has been a bit of a stop-start affair, with this Spurs' third break between fixtures of nine days or more. And the result of that itinerary has been some uneven performances where the results have been better than the game flow. Before their loss to Wolves, Spurs were easily second-best in a 2-2 draw at Everton and then fortunate to earn a last-gasp 2-1 home win against Brighton.
Perhaps most importantly though, the breather will be welcome for Son Heung-Min after his return from representing South Korea at the Asian Cup. The South Korean attacker leads Spurs with 12 goals on just 7.1 expected goals' worth of chances. And his efficiency makes up for more than half of Tottenham's total over-performance in terms of goals scored compared to xG scored.
He struggled to get involved in the Wolves defeat — his first full 90 minutes since his return — failing to register a shot in a league game he started for the first time this season.
Crystal Palace
Glasner got the ideal result in his debut, but there probably isn't much more you can take from a win very much shaped by Josh Brownhill's 35th-minute dismissal for tugging down Jefferson Lerma after a turnover and denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity.
And in truth, Palace had little in the way of clear chances (aside from the one Brownhill's foul denied) until U.S. international Chris Richards' 68th-minute header broke the deadlock and forced Burnley to abandon their understandably conservative posture.
But what the result does do is immediately turn the pressure down a bit on Glasner, who had never played or managed in England before being hired to help Palace lift themselves out of a relegation scrap. And that will give him more room to implement his ideas immediately, including a 3-4-3 formation that is his preferred shape, rather than the four-back systems the Eagles played in the overwhelming majority of their games this season under previous manager Roy Hodgson.
It also lowers the stakes slightly for the potential return of Eberechi Eze, half of what could be one of the better wide midfield pairings in the Premier League, after he has been out of the side with a thigh issue. Despite making only 16 appearances, Eze's five Premier League goals are third on the squad and only one back of the team lead. And he's been in training this week, boosting hopes that Saturday could signal the end of his most-recent layoff at the one-month mark.
On the opposite flank, Michael Olise is considerably further away from a return and a first chance to win over his new manager.
Tottenham vs Crystal Palace
Prediction
We don't know what to expect of Glasner's team playing an opponent of superior quality, though his Bundesliga record suggests he won't take a posture as adventurous as what Brentford or Bournemouth have embraced at times.
Aside from that, though, we can only wager here based on Spurs' track record.
It's become well-known that Spurs have earned their lofty perch in the table by outperforming their expected goals by a considerable margin. In fact, their +13.1 margin between their actual goal difference and their expected goal difference is the best in the league.
And while that probably owes at least partly to good fortune, there is also something to be said for the habit of playing in close matches and earning results in them. That's exactly what Postecoglou's group have done this season, with half of their overall league wins — including five of nine at home — coming by a singular goal.
They also have only one defeat against teams currently in the bottom half of the table, a 4-1 defeat to Chelsea that came playing with nine men. That habit of defeating the teams you are supposed to is replicated by another famous xG overachiever, Marco Silva's Fulham.
That said, the preponderance of data suggesting Spurs are defying the analytic gods means that if you do want to bet them, you're probably best off at least also leveraging one of their less healthy habits to get a price that makes it palatable.
The best way to do that is probably tying a Spurs victory to a yes wager on both teams scoring at +185 odds and an implied 35.1% probability. It's a bet that has cashed in four of Spurs' six previous home matches against sides in the lower half of the table, and one a bit more reinforced by the data: Tottenham have kept only two home clean sheets all season and also have played just once at home while allowing less than 1.0 xG.
There's probably still value where other books have the number, in the +150 to +165 range.
