(Football news) The 15th-place Palace team, meanwhile, is only four points behind their next opponents as they make the short trip to Stamford Bridge. As has been the case for Chelsea fans all season, last week’s Boxing Day loss to Wolverhampton Wanderers brought about a high and a low for them.

Wolves were kept in the match at halftime due to poor first-half decision-making, most notably by Raheem Sterling in a three-on-one scenario, and the home team made full use of this advantage after the interval. Deep into additional time, Christopher Nkunku scored his first goal for Chelsea, but it was only a consolation goal as Chelsea lost for the eighth time in their previous eight Premier League games under Mauricio Pochettino.

The West Londoners are currently eight points outside of the top six and need to pull together a winning streak in order to prevent the realistic prospect of concentrating on winning the FA Cup or EFL Cup in order to guarantee a spot in Europe.

Chelsea has won its last two games and is unbeaten in its past five across all competitions, despite the fact that just three of the team’s nine top-flight matches have taken place at Stamford Bridge. After just one victory in 11 games, Roy Hodgson leads his Palace team against Chelsea under mounting pressure to stay on as Selhurst Park’s manager.

Despite this, they believed that their consecutive draws against Brighton & Hove Albion and Manchester City were a positive step, even if they are currently only six points above the relegation zone.

Losing to Brighton late on was disappointing, but aside from losing at home to Bournemouth, Palace has only lost once, giving up a lead against Liverpool after Jordan Ayew was controversially sent off. In the other four recent games, Palace has been the underdog.

Despite having the second poorest attacking record in the division, Palace has scored goals in eight of their last nine Premier League games, along with three other clubs.

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