With Wilfred Zaha out, can Crystal Palace stay in the Premier League?

With star man Wilfred Zaha set for an extended period on the sidelines, Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson will be left with quite the selection dilemma.

While Luka Milivojevic may have won Crystal Palace a point versus Newcastle on Saturday, the loss of Wilfred Zaha made it feel more like two points lost. Zaha is slated to see a specialist for the injury but the early prognosis is that he’ll miss at least four weeks.

That timeframe would cause Zaha to miss fixtures versus Everton, Tottenham, Manchester United and Chelsea. While most of these aren’t games Palace are expected to win, the team is at a severe disadvantage without its best player available. The Eagles may be sitting at 14th in the table, but they can ill afford to drop points as they’re only three points clear of the relegation zone.

Zaha has been involved in six goals for Crystal Palace this season (four goals, two assists) but his importance to the side goes far beyond counting statistics. Zaha and Andros Townsend make the Crystal Palace attack tick, and losing Zaha could see Palace return to their anemic scoring rates from when he missed six games near the beginning of the season. Without Zaha in the lineup, Palace scored zero goals and allowed 14(!). While that’s unlikely to be repeated now that Roy Hodgson has stabilized the team, the Eagles should expect some kind of drop off without Zaha.

To make matters worse, Bakary Sako, the only other natural winger in the squad, will be out for the remainder of the season with a fractured ankle. This leaves Christen Benteke and Townsend as the only attack-minded players available to Crystal Palace, which could lead to some interesting lineups.

Let’s take a look at some of the possible replacements for Zaha in the lineup:

• Patrick van Aanholt: While PVA is technically a left-back, he gets forward as much as anyone and could thrive in an advanced position. With 12 key passes and 14 shots attempted this season, van Aanholt could slot in and thrive while bombing forward. Moving PVA up could be done in a few different ways now that Mamadou Sakho is returning to health. Hodgson could move to three in the back, eliminating the need for a left-back and allowing him to play Townsend next to Benteke, or he could slide PVA up and replace him directly at left-back with Pape Souare.
• James McArthur: While McArthur is a central midfielder, he has played out wide at times, like Ruben Loftus-Cheek earlier in the season. McArthur offers a more conservative option than van Aanholt but he’s reliable in possession which is useful for a team in a relegation fight. The issue with moving McArthur is that Crystal Palace would be stretched extremely thin if Yohan Cabaye struggles to stay fit to close out the season.
• Alexander Sorloth: The new Norwegian striker was bound to get some game time at some point and partnering him with Benteke might be the most obvious option in Zaha’s absence. That would still require a central midfielder or van Aanholt to move out wide, and it’s hard to say how two natural target forwards will play together, but this might be the lineup that keeps everyone as close as possible to their best position.

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Zaha’s loss is massive for Crystal Palace but it isn’t all doom and gloom because of how Hodgson has set the team up this season. They’ve come into every match prepared even if the odds are stacked against them, and while it’s not ideal to be without a player of Zaha’s caliber, Townsend and Benteke should be able to pick up the slack. Add in the return of Sakho and Crystal Palace should have just enough to stay in the Premier League, even without Zaha.