OLIVER Glasner has issued a rallying call to Crystal Palace supporters as his side prepare to “fight and suffer” in their quest for their first Premier League win of the season against Liverpool at Selhurst Park on Saturday.
The Eagles have just three points from six games and take on the league leaders, who have won five of their first six matches under new boss Arnie Slot.
Palace beat Liverpool 1-0 at Anfield last season to start a run of six wins and a draw in their last seven games, the best run in Glasner’s time in charge.
“Tomorrow we will need a big heart, [Liverpool have] fantastic players and a new manager,” Glasner said. “The players look hungry and ambitious. We want to score because if we don’t do that we don’t win.
“We will need the home support. There will be moments in the game when we will need to fight and suffer. If you suffer we need people who support us.”
Meanwhile, Glasner had some bad news on Matheus Franca. Glasner said: “A tough situation for him and I’m not expecting him to play many games in 2024 for us. No one back but there was no one out, let’s see after the international break.
“[Trevoh] Chalobah has one more training week with us and he looked quite good. He looks close to start.”
At his pre-match press conference on Friday, Slot insisted insisted his players would not be getting carried away with their start.
“No, we are Liverpool,” the Dutchman said. “Players here are used to being top of the table. It would be very weird if a player at Liverpool is with his head in the clouds.
“If we don’t play well tomorrow then people will probably come up with that instead of saying that Palace played well or we maybe did other things wrong.
“These players are experienced enough to understand the league table of six games with the schedule we had compared to some other teams.
“Also, Virgil [van Dijk], Alisson, Trent [Alexander-Arnold], Robbo [Andrew Robertson], Mo [Salah], they won the league and Champions League here so for them it’s a nice thing but I’m not expecting them to watch their mobile phones every second of the day seeing they are top of the table.”
