The return of Jesus is beautiful, Palace fans are optimistic and their xG form suggests a reason for it… – Suburban Gooners

I’ll do my usual look at how Palace fans are feeling at the moment before our game at the weekend, and also touch a bit on their game last night against Larnaca (which I think is better known for its party town history than its football team, but there you go), but before that, how about the interview in The Standard with Gabriel Jesus, in which he says he’s feeling good and looking forward to the final phase of his rehab and one soon to come Looking forward to returning to the pitch? How soon that will happen remains to be seen as even he says he has to stop himself from doing too much now that he is on the training pitch. A quick look at a torn ACL puts the time frame at nine to 12 months, so we’re in the thick of it, and considering he’s 28 and not getting young anymore, any setback now could do more damage than any possible involvement this season.

It’s a fascinating case because I think most of us have sadly left him, but as Simon Collings points out in his article, it’s easy to forget that before he injured his knee in United’s FA Cup game last January, he had scored six goals in seven games. I had completely forgotten about that and I think I had even mentioned here and on social media that I thought he should probably look for a move back to Brazil this season. After all, he’s most likely fallen behind in the pecking order with Kai and Big Vik fighting for the central spot and Merino’s goalscoring prowess taking a backseat. Gabriel Jesus can play in the top three spots, but he’s not ahead of Saka, Martinelli, Trossard, Madueke and probably even Eze at this point. But at 28, he’s no busted flush and that pre-injury hit is worth considering before we think he’s done. He doesn’t think he’s at Arsenal and the guys at Arseblog deserve a lot of credit for translating an article in which he says he still wants to win at Arsenal. Fine words, the right words, but I suspect Arsenal would consider it if there was an offer in January. We already have a big squad, but with players already not included in the matchday squad and his salary being what it is, I suspect Arsenal could look to capitalize on an asset – however nice he may be.

However, until we get a deal he will be integrated back in and that just shows more strength we have at the club and I wonder if Palace will shy away from that on Sunday. They lost against Larnaca last night and although I didn’t watch the game, I looked at the result and the stats and it seems that they dominated the game a lot and played against a pretty strong team. Henderson, Guehi, Lacrooix, Munoz, Mitchell, Sarr and Mateta are all regulars for the Eagles, and although Glasner made subs from the 71st minute onwards, they are still guys who get games on a Thursday night before playing on Sunday. This is something our squad is used to and our team has been able to deal with it, but I wonder how Palace will respond to this? Hopefully they’re feeling the fatigue as we’ve had two extra nights of rest, and with Bernardo Silva grumbling about it in the game we played against City (they had the season before when we were in Italy, two days after playing at home before going to Manchester, but there you have it), you know it’s affecting these finely tuned athletes. Even if it’s only a 5% difference in our favor, that works for me.

As for their fans, a quick look at some forums reveals a slight discrepancy between fans. Based on the 30 or so predictions I’ve read, there’s a mix of “we’ll get a bad draw” and “this isn’t a good time for us to play them given our form”, with the bias leaning more towards a draw than a loss. I can understand that to some extent. We must remember that Palace were going through an insane unbeaten run before they were beaten at Everton, but that defeat last night is now being turned into a ‘three without a win’ sequence at the FA Cup defending champions. As usual with the Palace fans I’ve seen, there’s a bit of the old “as long as we’re good at corners they can’t hurt us” attitude and while I hope the Palace coaching staff apply the same principle, I’m not naive enough to believe that.

We all know that they are a good Palace team, a well-coached Palace team, who create a lot of chances with their middle block approach, which creates a lot of chances when they jump from front to back quickly. Hell, they are by far the current xG leaders in the table:

Hopefully this screenshot comes through and you can see it on FBref.com, but it shows you that Arsenal are facing a team that knows where the goal is and I suspect we’ll miss a few chances in search of the goals on Sunday. It could make this game a transition game and give us more chances, but I’ll save any further tactical analysis for the weekend.

We’ll wait until we hear any news about the team from Mikel and Oliver, and while hopefully ours will be positive, it will be interesting to see what Glasner plans to do considering that – unusually for them – Palace are at a disadvantage against a European side this time around because they themselves are involved in midweek competitions.

So I’ll leave it at that and get back to you tomorrow after the press conferences with some more thoughts. Have a good time.