Crystal Palace defender Joachim Andersen enjoys a battle within a battle — and at Anfield in August came out the convincing winner of a good one, winding up Liverpool forward Darwin Nunez to the point of inducing a head loss, and a head-butt, from the Uruguayan, one that earned him a red card.
Afterwards, Andersen branded Nunez “really stupid”, but if the Swede made a fool of his rival and light work of that particular and all too literal tete-a-tete, then tonight could offer a more testing examination, as he steps up to what might just about be the boss level.
Diego Costa’s return to English football has so far yielded few fireworks: a cameo off the bench against West Ham, an almost mawkishly polite return to Stamford Bridge and a quiet outing against Nottingham Forest. In other words, something is due.
“[Costa] is a character,” Andersen said ahead of tonight’s meeting with Wolves at Selhurst Park. “It will be a fun game if he plays. I like to play against these types of strikers, so hopefully we can have a nice battle.”
Palace enjoyed a more encouraging start to the season than their points tally suggests, handicapped by a tough fixture list that included meetings against Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool within their opening seven games.
They have taken four points from two matches since that run came to an end, but had to graft past Leeds before drawing 0-0 with Leicester in a drab affair on Saturday, the solace being that result delivered only a second League clean sheet of the season.
“A clean sheet is always good, especially away, and it gives us confidence that we have a good, solid structure to the team,” Andersen added.
“With a bit of luck we could have won, but we need to be better at getting these ugly wins.
“We had one against Leeds, where we didn’t play as well as we could. We need to be better at that, but hopefully that will come.”
Wolves head to Selhurst Park still managerless but having earned a morale-boosting victory over a Nottingham Forest side who, for now at least, are relegation rivals.
Former boss Nuno Espirito Santo, currently managing in Saudi Arabia after being sacked by Tottenham a year ago, has been linked with a return.
