Match Preview: Crystal Palace v Brentford | OneFootball

Brentford travel across London to face Crystal Palace in the Premier League at Selhurst Park on Sunday (2pm kick-off GMT).

Thomas Frank's side fell to a 2-0 defeat against league leaders Liverpool last time out but were victorious in their last away game, securing a 5-0 win at Southampton.

Sunday's match will be televised on Sky Sports.

Analysis, team news, match officials and more. Here's everything you need to know ahead of the Bees’ latest test.

Pre-match analysis

Richard Cole, Playmaker Stats: Tight game expected at Selhurst Park

Brentford face a tough test when they make the trip to Selhurst Park to take on a Crystal Palace team who have made themselves very difficult to beat.

Oliver Glasner's Palace have improved as the season has progressed and are currently on a run of four wins out of their last five games in all competitions – a spell that includes a solid draw against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

Indeed, since the November international break, only one team has managed to get the better of the Eagles. In their last 13 games, Palace have lost just twice - to Arsenal in both the Premier League and the Carabao Cup - while also winning six and drawing five.

But Palace have had their struggles in front of their fans this year. Only two teams have scored fewer Premier League goals at home than Palace (10) - Ipswich on eight and Southampton on seven.

In comparison, Brentford top the home goals chart with 29 – almost three times as many as Sunday's opponents!

While Palace are struggling for goals at home, Thomas Frank's attacking line can expect to face a stern defence.

The Eagles have made more tackles than any other team in the Premier League (475) with Daniel Muñoz the division's top tackler (77) while Tyrick Mitchell (62) and Will Hughes (49) also feature in the top 20.

In Maxence Lacroix, Palace have the defender with the joint-second highest number of interceptions in the league (36) while the Frenchman also ranks ninth for clearances (99).

Beyond the tackling and intercepting, the Eagles have been particularly adept at blocking. In total, Palace have made 536 blocks (sixth in the league). At the same time, the in-form Mitchell is responsible for getting in the way of 10 crosses (fourth in the league) and second for passes blocked (36, behind only Liverpool's Alexis Mac Allister).

Brentford may even find a challenge aerially. The Bees typically top the 'aerials won' stat but Palace aren't too far behind with 314 aerials won compared to the west Londoners' 366.

But that's not to say that Bryan Mbeumo, Yoane Wissa and co won't find opportunities. Palace goalkeeper Dean Henderson has had to make 11 saves from inside the six-yard box – more than any other goalkeeper in the division.

While goals aren't Palace's speciality this campaign, they are a threat. In fact, no other team has had as many attempts from set-piece situations as Palace (93 shots).

Only a lack of efficacy stops them from being the most dangerous team from dead ball situations, with the Eagles' nine goals from set-pieces (excluding penalties) second only to Arsenal.

The Bees will also have to deal with the threat of Jean-Philippe Mateta, who has eight goals in the Premier League so far this season – more than a quarter of his team's total tally. The forward has also made a brilliant start to the New Year having scored all but one of Palace's league goals in 2025.

The 27-year-old netted the equaliser against Chelsea at the start of the month before the opener against Leicester City and a brace in the 2-0 away win against West Ham last Saturday.

We can expect a tight game on Sunday as 11th-placed Brentford take on 12th-placed Palace. It's no surprise that the first five Premier League games between these two all ended in draws before the sides won a game each.

Scout report

Dan Long, Sky Sports: Palace can secure top-half finish after slow start to the season

The 2023/24 season was one of the more memorable Premier League campaigns for Crystal Palace, as they scored more goals than ever before (57), posted their joint-best points total (49) and finished in the top half for only the second time in 15 seasons in the competition.

The way Oliver Glasner came in as Roy Hodgson's successor and led the Eagles to seven wins from his first 13 games - including six in the final seven - certainly whet the appetite.

Fans will not have wanted the season to end - not least because it was the last glimpse they would see of star man Michael Olise before his anticipated move to Bayern Munich.

The funds from his sale and that of Joachim Andersen were reinvested, but the momentum Glasner's side had generated at the tail end of last term all but evaporated at the start of this. They opened the season with a 2-1 defeat to Brentford at the Gtech and picked up just three points from their opening eight, which left them in the relegation zone by the end of October.

Granted, they had played Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest during that time, but the lack of goals was of concern to Glasner. Following the Forest defeat, he said: "At the moment we don't score goals and we have to be honest. No goal today, no goal versus Liverpool, no goal versus Manchester United, and if you play like this it is difficult to win."

They did win the next game, 1-0 at home against Tottenham, but then it was five games until they picked up their second of the season, 1-0 away at Ipswich on 3 December. Thankfully for Palace, it has turned out to be a false start; a blip - perhaps kindly placed, in hindsight - at the start of the season. And things have only got better since then.

Twice they took the lead at home to Manchester City, before Rico Lewis secured a 2-2 draw for Pep Guardiola's side and, in the seven games since, they have won four, drawn two and lost just once, when Arsenal ran riot with a 5-1 win at Selhurst Park four days before Christmas.

Their recent wins have come against rivals Brighton, Southampton, Leicester and West Ham, with draws against in-form Bournemouth and Chelsea. While those victories have not come against top six sides, they have come against teams battling at the wrong end of the table or those around them. To be in with a shout of another top-half finish, those types of wins are essential.

Glasner and the fans will want more, though - and there is certainly room to improve. Palace have won the fewest games of any of the current top 15 teams (six) and, of the 17 teams outside the relegation zone, only Everton (18) have scored fewer than their 25 so far.

But with Manchester United, Everton and Fulham next up after Brentford's visit, in their current vein of form and with experience of finishing with a flourish last season, Palace really could properly kick their top-half push into gear over the coming weeks.

In the dugout

Oliver Glasner

Barring a short loan spell at LASK in the 2003/04 season, Oliver Glasner spent his entire 19-year playing career at SV Ried in his native Austria - from 1992 to 2011 - where he holds the record for the most appearances made for the club, with 571 in all competitions.

During his time at SV Ried, he won the Austria Cup in 1998 and 2011, as well as helping the club to achieve promotion to the Austrian Bundesliga in 1994/95 and a decade later in 2004/05.

In August 2011, he suffered a brain haemorrhage and, after an operation, was advised to end his playing career at the age of 36. After his enforced retirement, Glasner spent two years as assistant to Roger Schmidt at Red Bull Salzburg.

When Schmidt later left for Bayer Leverkusen, Glasner made his return to SV Ried. During his one and only season in charge, the club secured a fourth-straight sixth-placed finish. Next was a return to LASK. Glasner spent four seasons at Raiffeisen Arena and enjoyed plenty of success.

The club finished second in the second tier in his first season and were promoted as champions in 2016/17. Back in the top flight, they then finished fourth, before finishing second in 2018/19 - their highest finish since winning the Staatsliga in 1965.

Glasner then moved across the border to Wolfsburg in July 2019, where he found reasonable success and, two years later, joined Eintracht Frankfurt.

He could not guide the German club to any higher than seventh in his two seasons in charge, though he did mastermind the Europa League triumph in 2021/22, where Frankfurt beat Barcelona, West Ham and Rangers on their way to glory.

He departed Frankfurt in the summer of 2023 and joined Crystal Palace as Roy Hodgson's successor in February 2024.

The Gameplan

With Edmund Brack, South London Press

Edmund Brack, football reporter for South London Press, explains how Crystal Palace are likely to be set up to face Brentford on Sunday.

"It has not changed at all since the start of the season," said Brack. "It is a 3-4-2-1, with two no.10s.

"I would not expect Romain Esse to come straight into the fold. He is going to have a hard job of trying to beat Ismaïla Sarr and Eberechi Eze for a place in that starting XI.

"What Palace do have now with Esse is an attacking, creative option off the bench and that is what they greatly lack."

Read our full interview with Edmund Brack here.

Match officials

Harrington in charge for first Brentford game in over a year

Referee: Tony Harrington

Assistants: Marc Perry and Richard West

Fourth official: Tim Robinson

Video assistant referee: Darren England

Tony Harrington will be the man in the middle for Sunday's Premier League away game against Crystal Palace.

The Yorkshire-born referee was last in charge of a Brentford fixture in January 2024, when he saw over a 1-1 draw against Wolves at Gtech Community Stadium in the FA Cup.

He has officiated 15 games so far this season, with 12 of them being in the Premier League plus two in the Championship and one in the FA Cup.

Harrington's most recent outing saw him have the whistle for Brighton's 2-0 win against Ipswich at Portman Road last Thursday on an evening where he handed out four yellow cards.

Last meeting

Brentford 2 Crystal Palace 1 (Premier League, 18 August 2024)

Brentford began the 2024/25 Premier League with a 2-1 win against Crystal Palace at Gtech Community Stadium.

Bryan Mbeumo cut onto his left foot inside the box and curled in the opening goal with just under half an hour played in west London.

An Ethan Pinnock own goal brought the visitors level midway through the second half before Yoane Wissa bundled in the winner with 14 minutes remaining.