🔗 Share this article

You could forgive Oliver Glasner for preferring to spend a quiet few days with his loved ones in Austria ahead of Christmas, rather than gearing up for Crystal Palace's twenty-ninth fixture of the campaign—a League Cup quarter-final against Arsenal. However, the suggestion that Palace could prioritize other competitions was swiftly rejected by their boss.

"Absolutely not, I don't think so," remarked Glasner following his team's side's 4-1 hammering to Leeds. "Should anyone informs me that we lose on purpose, the next day I'm no longer the manager anymore."

There exists a clear difference in Glasner's approach to cup competitions compared to his forerunner, Roy Hodgson. This first was evident during Palace's run to the League Cup last eight in his first full season in command. Under Hodgson, the club had previously been eliminated from both the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup by the time Glasner took over at Selhurst Park. In contrast, Glasner selected his first-choice lineup for victories over Norwich, QPR, and Aston Villa, paving the way for a meeting with Arsenal.

That prior quarter-final match ended in a three-two defeat at the Emirates Stadium, due to a somewhat debated hat-trick from Gabriel Jesus, even though Palace having led at the interval. Almost exactly twelve months later, Glasner now faces the task to devise a strategy for payback versus the current Premier League pace-setters in a fixture that was moved to this week owing to European commitments.

A Cost of Achievement and Continental Fatigue

Glasner has, in a sense, been a casualty of his own achievements. Leading Palace to their first major trophy with a win in the FA Cup final has brought the challenges of European football for the very first time. These demands are taking a toll on some fatigued squad members, many of whom have hardly had a rest all term.

The coach deployed an completely different team, including four teenagers, in their final Conference League match. Yet, ahead of the Arsenal game, he admitted he will have "no option" but to pick the majority of his preferred side, which looked decidedly jaded as they unusually let in four goals from set-pieces versus Leeds. "Have to. Yes, have to," he stated.

Arsenal's Perspective and Team Dilemmas

On Mikel Arteta and Arsenal, the circumstances are different. The manager must juggle his ambition to win a second major trophy with extreme pragmatism. Last year, a muscle injury to Bukayo Saka suffered in a league game against Palace only days after their Carabao Cup fightback greatly harmed their title hopes.

Arteta had made a number of changes for that cup tie but was compelled to bring on his "key players" after the break. Saka came off the bench to set up Jesus for a crucial goal in a passage of play that left Glasner "furious" over a potential offside, with no VAR available—a situation that will be the case again on Tuesday.

Arsenal have an eight-game unbeaten run versus Palace, featuring seven victories. Gabriel Jesus, who netted a hat-trick in last season's League Cup encounter and a brace in a subsequent league win before suffering a long-term knee injury, is expected to begin for the first since that injury. Arteta disclosed the striker wrote a "beautiful" letter to his teammates about what football means to him.

"We are accustomed to it," said Arteta on the busy fixture list. "I think this week was the only full week we had to prepare. The rest until February at least is going to be like this. We have a beautiful opportunity to go into the semi-final of a tournament so we will be prepared."

Amid important players coming back from injury and a desire to progress, Arsenal present a daunting test for a Crystal Palace side urgently in need of rejuvenation as the holiday period intensifies.