Crystal Palace return to Selhurst Park on Sunday afternoon with a bit of spring in the step after that emphatic 3-0 win over Fiorentina in the UEFA Conference League on Thursday. Oliver Glasner's side are 14th in the Premier League on 39 points, which means they aren't safe enough to coast and aren't high enough to dream too wildly. There is still work to do. Newcastle United arrive two places above them in 12th with 42 points, and the gap between these sides is small enough that this feels more important than a mid-table label suggests.
For Palace, this is about turning encouraging moments into a proper league finish. They've had a European run to juggle and that matters here. They came through a stubborn tie with AEK Larnaca, drawing 0-0 at home and 1-1 away before then producing one of their sharpest displays of the season against Fiorentina. Newcastle's recent weeks have been shaped by bigger-stage football too, just of a different kind. Eddie Howe's team held Barcelona to a 1-1 draw at home in the Champions League knockout stage, then got torn apart 7-2 away in the second leg. Around that, they have mixed useful league wins with flat defeats. That's been the story of their season really. Good enough to threaten, messy enough to get dragged back.
The stakes aren't quite Europe-or-bust, but they are still real. Palace would love to use Thursday's result as a launchpad rather than a one-off. Newcastle need a response after losing at home to Sunderland before the international break. Lose here and the noise gets louder. Simple as that.
Crystal Palace Form & Analysis
Palace's last six games read like a side that has become hard to beat, even if not always easy to trust. The run started with a 2-1 defeat at Manchester United on 1 March, then came a superb 3-1 win away at Tottenham on 5 March — the sort of result that reminds you Glasner's team can hurt good sides when space opens up. After that came three straight draws, and none of them were thrillers: 0-0 at home to AEK Larnaca, 0-0 at home to Leeds United, then 1-1 away to AEK. Tight, controlled, a touch short of invention. Then they blew Fiorentina away on Thursday, winning 3-0 with authority rather than luck.
That latest win matters. Palace posted 2.09 xG to Fiorentina's 0.45, had 17 shots to eight, six big chances to one, and never looked like they were hanging on. Jean-Philippe Mateta scored from the spot, Tyrick Mitchell added another before half-time, and Ismaïla Sarr wrapped it up late on. Daichi Kamada supplied one of the assists. It wasn't a smash-and-grab. It was convincing. That's now five games unbeaten since the loss at Old Trafford, and the sequence has had a clear shape: they aren't giving much away, and when they click, they can suddenly look far more dangerous than their league position suggests.
Still, Selhurst Park hasn't exactly been a fortress in the league. Palace have won only three of their 15 home league matches, drawing seven and losing five, with just 14 goals scored and 18 conceded. Those numbers are modest. No point pretending otherwise. They've often kept games alive without taking charge of them, which is why so many home matches have drifted into draws. The upside is that they don't usually get blown away there either, and the recent run points to a side with growing control. The xG projection for this game — 1.31 to 0.83 in Palace's favour — fits what we've seen lately: a team creating enough, defending decently, and looking more settled than Newcastle.
The question is whether Thursday took anything out of them. Fair one. But confidence can cover a lot of heavy legs, and Palace have that right now.
Newcastle United Form & Analysis
Newcastle are much harder to pin down. Their last six matches have swung from excellent to awful and back again. They beat Manchester United 2-1 at home on 4 March, then lost 3-1 to Manchester City in the FA Cup three days later. They steadied themselves with a very good 1-0 league win away at Chelsea on 14 March, only to be hammered 7-2 by Barcelona in Europe after drawing the first leg 1-1 at St James' Park. Then came the worst result of the lot: a 2-1 home defeat to Sunderland on 22 March.
That loss to Sunderland wasn't one of those games where the better side somehow got caught. Newcastle were second best too often. They scored early through Anthony Gordon, assisted by Nick Woltemade, but let the game turn and finished with 1.29 xG against 2.44 xGA. Sunderland had more shots, more shots on target, and the bigger chances. For a team looking to push on after a huge European tie, it was a bad look. And it left Newcastle with two matches without a win going into this one, the kind of wobble that can either sharpen a side up or expose all the cracks.
Away from home in the league, they've been ordinary rather than disastrous. Four wins, four draws and seven defeats from 15 away games, with 15 scored and 19 conceded. Those numbers tell you plenty. They can nick results on the road — as they did at Chelsea — but they don't control away matches well enough often enough. Newcastle have also been involved in goals regularly, with both teams scoring in nine of their last 10 overall, and that speaks to the central issue: there is attacking punch here, but clean sheets are rare and spells of defensive looseness keep costing them.
The flip side? Newcastle do carry threat. They've scored 44 league goals to Palace's 33, and even in poor runs they tend to create moments. Anthony Gordon remains part of that edge in transition, and Howe's side are usually front-foot enough to ask questions. But this doesn't look like a settled away side walking into London in command of itself. It looks like a talented team that can be rattled.
Head-to-Head
There is a recent Newcastle slant to this fixture. Palace haven't beaten them in the last three meetings, and the reverse fixture on 4 January ended in a 2-0 Newcastle win at St James' Park. Before that, Newcastle crushed Palace 5-0 in April last year, though Selhurst Park did produce a 1-1 draw in November 2024.
You don't need to go overboard with old scores, but there is a pattern worth respecting: Newcastle have often made this awkward for Palace, especially when they score first. Palace did beat them 2-0 at home in April 2024, so it isn't some hopeless match-up. Still, the recent edge has belonged to Howe's side.
We Predict: Home Win
Home Win at 3.00 looks big enough to take seriously. Palace come into this game off a statement 3-0 victory over Fiorentina, they're unbeaten in five, and the underlying numbers from that latest match were strong rather than flattering. Newcastle, by contrast, lost their last outing at home to Sunderland and allowed 2.44 xGA in the process. That's not the profile of a side you rush to trust away from home.
There is a slight tension here because Palace's home league record is far from sparkling, and Newcastle do have more raw attacking output across the season. Even so, this feels like a spot where form and freshness of purpose matter more than broad-season totals. Glasner's team look tighter, calmer and better drilled. We're backing the home win and a 2-1 Palace scoreline fits the shape of it — Newcastle should have enough to create one big moment, but Palace look the more reliable side over 90 minutes. If you wanted a side angle, Both Teams to Score has appeal given Newcastle's recent trend and the predicted score.
