Crystal Palace boss Sam Allardyce finally has his side firing on all cylinders.
Crystal Palace won their third consecutive Premier League game on Saturday and have doubled their win tally for the season in the last two months.
After looking down and out in the drop zone earlier in the campaign, Sam Allardyce’s side are now four points clear of relegation with a game in hand. So are they safe?
Palace enjoying better form than two of the top-six sides
The Eagles are currently 16th in the Premier League table with 28 points from as many games this season, coming off the back of four wins from their last half a dozen outings. Crystal Palace have a better return from the six games than fourth-placed Liverpool (10 points) and sixth-placed Arsenal (6 points), and only leaders Chelsea (14 points), second-placed Tottenham Hotspur (13 points), third-placed Manchester City (14 points) and seventh-placed Everton (13 points) have fared better.
Crystal Palace’s defensive record has greatly improved and so have the results. Four clean sheets in their last six games is a fantastic return and manager Sam Allardyce is confident his side are on track to stay up. “It’s on. It’s on. We’ve won three on the trot, four out of six; we’ve made the team better all round. The change in the team out of possession is one of the reasons we’ve turned this around,” he said after the Watford victory.
Recent winning streak sees Palace out of trouble
They find themselves four points clear of 18th-placed Hull City, having played a game fewer than the Tigers, and could be seven points ahead of the bottom three as they approach the run-in. Prior to the three-game winning streak, Crystal Palace were 19th in the Premier League with only 19 points from 25 games, two points adrift of safety. They’ve had such a dramatic turnaround in a matter of weeks, considerably out-performing their relegation rivals in the process – 18th-placed Hull City (four points), 19th-placed Middlesbrough (zero points) and 20th-placed Sunderland (one point).
The Eagles still have work to do to ensure sides below them in the table don’t catch them in the run-in, but they have put themselves in a fantastic position to survive. Based on the bottom-three sides’ current points-per-game average, 32 points might be enough to keep Palace up – just four points more than their current total with a potential 30 points still at stake. Crystal Palace are 1/6 to stay up in the Premier League this season.
So are the Eagles safe from the drop?
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