OLIVER Glasner says Marc Guehi is fit to face Millwall on Saturday – and Matt Turner will start in goal.
Guehi was a doubt after the 4-1 win over Aston Villa on Tuesday but is available against the Lions as the South London rivals battle it out for a place in the FA Cup quarter-final at a sold-out Selhurst Park.
Turner has been Glasner’s goalkeeper in the competition after starting ahead of Dean Henderson against Stockport County and DoncasterRovers.
“All players are fit and available again,” Glasner said in his pre-match press conference. Marc Guehi is okay. It helped that we had one more day between these two games. The only change in the squad is Matheus Franca will be in the squad, and Caleb Kporha won’t be, but all others are ready.
“Matt Turner was in goal for both games, and he will be starting tomorrow.
“It’s not a gift, he is deserving. I can see his ambition in training and I can see he’s always giving 100 per cent in training and he also deserves some games – that’s why he will start tomorrow.
“He knew when he arrived that Dean is our No. 1, because he is doing an amazing job for us. That doesn’t mean he [will do it] for the rest of his life, but of course I never will change a goalkeeper if he makes one or two mistakes, because they need this confidence. They’re so exposed.
“It’s the same with a striker – if he misses one or two chances, you can’t say ‘now you’re not a [starter]’, because if he never gets chances, okay then you can think about it, but these players need confidence – they need to feel the trust.
“I don’t like to change, but we have two great goalkeepers, we have two international goalkeepers and also Remi [Matthews] as the third one, who is really hard-working in every single training session, and they deserve to play games. That’s why it’s Matt’s time tomorrow.”
Alex Neil’s Millwall showed their threat away from home when they defeated Leeds United 2-0 at Elland Road in the last round.
“I’m expecting a great game in a great environment,” Glasner said. “Full, sold-out Selhurst Park and lovely weather is predicted. I think that’s why we all love football, in the FA Cup it’s Saturday, high noon, so everything will be warm.
“We have to show it tomorrow, so I don’t talk about winning the FA Cup when we were around the plus sixteen now. We’re facing a good Millwall side, yeah, with confidence and they will try to take their chance. So it makes no sense talking about winning a trophy when we were around the plus sixteen.
“It’s just talking about the next game and that’s Millwall. We’re prepared, like we prepare every single opposition and, as I mentioned, they have a new manager since January and a clear structure in play.
“I like what I could see on the screen, but I talked to the players today in our meeting and we said we don’t care which team we have to play, which team we are facing, because we want to win the game and especially we want to win it in our way.
“We want to play like Crystal Palace is playing and if we do this on a top level, we know that we can beat any team. This is what we showed, what we proved, but we also know if we don’t do that on a top level, we can struggle against any team.
“So it’s really just focusing on what we want to do, what we need to do, and having respect for the Millwall team, for the manager.”
