Southampton v Crystal Palace Tips: Best bets as Palace travel south

Southampton find themselves amongst the teams who’ve been battling relegation this season whilst never really being in any danger themselves. Their fall from grace in 2021 has been quite remarkable. They’ve managed just two league wins since they conquered Liverpool at Anfield on January 4th and will be looking to arrest their slump against a Crystal Palace side who have very little to play for.

Palace are going through somewhat of a rough patch themselves, with their only two wins in their last nine games coming against the already relegated Sheffield United and West Bromwich Albion. There are question marks about the future of Roy Hodgson with talk of a potential retirement rumbling on for several months.

Crystal Palace won the reverse fixture at Selhurst Park 1-0, despite only having 29% possession and they’ll be happy to allow Southampton to keep the ball in a similar manner here as they look to hit them on the break. Hasenhuttl will be without key midfielder Oriol Romeu and Ryan Bertrand. Main goal threat Danny Ings is also out.

Roy Hodgson’s side are averaging just under 10 goal kicks per game in their last ten matches and Southampton's opponents are averaging over 6 goal kicks per game in the last ten in all competitions.

The Saints average goal kicks against is brought down significantly from their recent games (Spurs and Leicester) when the opponents have had just 1 in both. The red card cost them significantly against the Foxes and I they should be on the front foot more than the Tottenham match here.

When they’ve been priced similarly to this match, Southampton are averaging over 15 shots per game since the middle of February (five matches). Crystal Palace are conceding an average of 16 shots per game in their last ten fixtures.

This combination bet has landed in two of the last five meetings between both teams and fallen short in just the one category on two of the other three occasions. 

Crystal Palace’s shots against per game and goal kicks taken per game both exceed the line required for this bet to win, while Hasenhutt’s high pressure defensive approach leads to a high number of throws in their matches (an average of 44.64 per game this season in the league).

The last five meetings between these side are seeing an average of a whopping 55 throw ins per game, which bodes well for the first part of our bet. Those meetings also have the Saints averaging 14 shots per game and Palace averaging 8.6 goal kicks per game as a result of that pressure. All three of these averages should see us get a good run for our money at a more than fair price of 4/1.

Southampton matches rank as the highest in the league in terms of throw ins taken with an average of over 44 per game. Crystal Palace matches see the fourth most throw ins in the league with an average of over 42 per game.

Where this bet becomes really interesting is the staggering number of throws in the recent meetings between the two sides. When these two sides met earlier in the season there was a total of 65 throw ins (33 for Palace and 32 for Southampton). The Premier League meeting before that, in the previous season, saw 73 throw ins (40 for Palace and 33 for Southampton).