Crystal Palace vs West Ham Predictions & Betting Tips, Match Previews

Crystal Palace are enjoying another very promising start to the season, but their fans, players, and manager alike will all be wary of it going south. Last season they were in the mix when talking of Europa League qualification in the early stages of the campaign, but a shocking winless streak sent them tumbling down the table, and they actually ended up in the relegation battle for a brief while.

It looked like they were still trying to recover from this nightmare at the start of this season as they lost to West Brom and Spurs, but the arrival of Christian Benteke from Liverpool has added some much needed firepower up front for them. It’s what they were lacking all last term. The big Belgian striker already has three goals to his name in the Premier League and is coming into this match having just scored a hat trick for Belgium, the first of which was the fastest ever goal in World Cup qualifying.

This won’t come as good news for the West Ham faithful. They have seen their heroes from last season struggle immensely in the opening stages of this season. They were knocked out of the Europa League by Astra, exactly the same as they were last season. Since then they have won just one of their seven Premier League games, losing five of them.

West Ham’s main issue here, much to Slaven Bilic’s frustration, is seemingly forgetting how to defend. They have conceded a Premier League high 17 goals in their seven games so far, including an horrendous surrender of a two goal lead at home to Watford which saw them lose 4-2. They followed that with a 4-2 loss at Watford and have since lost 3-0 at home to Southampton.

This awful defensive record has resulted in some entertaining and high scoring matches. Five of West Ham’s seven league matches have seen at least three goals scored. This is good news for Crystal Palace, who have netted ten times in their last four league games.

These poor defensive stats give us plenty of opportunities for a profitable Anytime Goalscorer bet, and now Andros Townsend is getting a solid run of games he looks a value bet at 12/5 to score anytime. He scored 4 goals for Newcastle in just 12 games after his move from Tottenham, and while he’s only scored 1 goal this season he’s been playing regularly and has been one of their best attacking players. He leads the team in number of shots per game (3.4 a match) and is second for dribbles (3.3 a match). While he hasn’t had much of the ball inside the area, he’s always a danger when running at players and should have plenty of success against a leaky West Ham defense.

Christian Benteke is in fine form at the moment after scoring a midweek hat trick and breaking the World Cup qualifying fastest goal record. He will be brimming with confidence, and as such I expect him to give the West Ham defence the runaround on Saturday, he’s 23/10 with bet365 to find the back of the net on Saturday.

This should result in a fair few goals, especially since West Ham have some very good attacking players at their disposal as well. Odds of 4/5 for Over 2.5 Goals are very good value, but with the home advantage and the better form I think Crystal Palace can get the win. I’m going for a 3-1 correct score prediction at huge odds of 18/1 as well.