Crystal Palace have defied expectations this season. In their pre-season predictions, many pundits and fans doomed Patrick Vieiras side to a relegation battle. However, The Eagles sit 14th in the Premier League after taking victories against two of Vieiras former teams in Manchester City and Arsenal. Standout players like Conor Gallagher and Marc Guehi have been great additions to Crystal Palace, who let go of 11 players for free in the summer transfer window.
What may be most interesting about Crystal Palace is their attacking brand. Despite scoring the 9th-most goals in the Premier League this season, Palace have created the 2nd-least shots so far.
This scout report will use tactical analysis to look into how Crystal Palace have implemented their tactics to become one of the most efficient sides, for chance creation, in the Premier League. We will also look at data to understand how Crystal Palace operate with the ball.
The data
To clarify, Crystal Palace are great at producing high-quality chances.
They have produced the 2nd-least shots within the Premier League with just 309 this season. Only Norwich, who sit at rock bottom in the Premier League, have created few shots with 297. But, the difference between these teams becomes evident when we look at their percentage of shots outside the box. Crystal Palace have created 98 shots from outside the box in this league campaign. They also have the lowest rate of shots from outside the box in the Premier League this season, with just 31.7% of their shots coming from outside the penalty area. Norwich have the highest percentage of shots from outside the box, with 50.5% of their shots coming from outside the box. Therefore, we can conclude that Crystal Palace are better at working the ball into the box than Norwich.
Their creation of chances helps with their shot on target percentage. Only Tottenham (41.1%), Manchester City (39.3%) and Liverpool (38.7%) have a higher rate of their shots troubling the goalkeeper than Palace (38.2). Palace also comes fourth in the Premier League teams shots to create one xG table, with 7.6 shots required to create one expected goal.
So, despite Vieiras men creating few chances, they shot inside the box more often than every other team in the Premier League. But why have they created so few shots?
Looking at the previous data, we s
