Crisis at the Palace as Roy is hit by injury woes
CRYSTAL Palace will be without defensive quartet Gary Cahill, Patrick van Aanholt, James Tomkins and Nathan Ferguson for the trip to United tomorrow.
Palace got their Premier League campaign off to a winning start last weekend with a 1-0 victory over Southampton courtesy of a fine Wilfried Zaha volley, despite suffering an injury crisis in defence.
The Eagles were forced to play central midfielder Cheikhou Kouyate at centreback in the match, with inexperienced youngster Tyrick Mitchell coming in at left-back.
However, while Palace will still be without four defenders at Old Trafford, they have had some positive news on the injury front. Centre-back Mamadou Sakho made his return to action in the mid-week defeat to Bournemouth in the Carabao Cup, while strikers Christian Benteke and
Connor Wickham are back in training.
“We are starting to get players back from injury,” Palace boss Roy Hodgson said. “Mamadou Sakho, of course, is the latest to be able to take part in training sessions. Christian Benteke and Connor Wickham took part in today’s training session, albeit with Connor it was more modified than with Christian.
“We hope also that Jairo Riedewald will train tomorrow - he didn’t train with the firstteam today - but we hope he will tomorrow having recovered from the injury he picked up last week.
“In terms of fitness of players, we are in a much healthier position than we have been in some time.”