While the weekend’s Premier League action understandably fixated on contests involving the A-list clubs with ambitions of silverware come the end of the season, the final game of the schedule arrives, somewhat overlooked and unloved, with perhaps the most weight to it.
Fulham will arrive at Selhurst Park on Monday evening having picked up seven points from their opening seven games, a somewhat meagre return that has inevitably had some pundits predicting a relegation battle for Martin Jol’s men.
The hosts, Crystal Palace, are in even worse shape however, with their only three points of the season coming in a home victory against the league’s bottom club and current disaster zone, Sunderland.
Most recently, of course, there have been comfortable losses to Swansea and Liverpool—180 minutes in which fans saw little to believe their side will stay up for the first time in five attempts.
It had always been expected that Palace would be embroiled in a fight simply to survive this season, but manager Ian Holloway remains confident he can keep the Eagles in the division.
This despite an incoherent start to the campaign that has seen crucial point-scoring opportunities—away to Stoke and at home to a Swansea side that had just been to Spain in the Europa League—squandered.
Holloway has previous experience of a relegation battle, seeing Blackpool slip back into the Championship in 2011. Both sides rose to the top flight via the play-offs, a route that only makes planning for Premier League opposition harder.
“There were things I got wrong with Blackpool,” Holloway admitted this week, as per the Daily Mail.
“I made mistakes, I got too involved and too emotionally charged. I did not make the best use of the January transfer window—but I have learnt from that.
“The challenge facing the team that comes up through the play-offs is as big as it has ever been. Sam Allardyce should be given a medal for keeping West Ham up last year. We have to finish first of the bottom four.”
If Palace are to beat three other teams and achieve that aim, then early indications are that Fulham might have to be one of them. Martin Jol’s side are blessed with some mercurial talents—Dimitar Berbatov, Bryan Ruiz, Adel Taarabt, to name three of the most obvious—which has marked them as an enjoyable spectacle for football’s cognoscenti, but similarly lacking in a backbone of reliable talent that would make them viable contenders for the top half.