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Zaha: Statistics underline winger’s importance to Crystal Palace
Without the Cote d’Ivoire international, the Eagles ended up on the losing side against the Clarets in Monday evening’s English elite division clash
Wilfried Zaha accentuated his importance to Crystal Palace after the Eagles bowed 1-0 to Burnley in Monday’s Premier League outing.
Since the start of 2014-15 when the Cote d’Ivoire international re-joined the Selhurst Park giants from Manchester United, Palace have lost 71.4 percent of English topflight games played without him.
These games included each of the last seven away matches away from home.
The 28-year-old did not travel with Roy Hodgson’ squad for the game against Sean Dyche’s men after testing positive for coronavirus.
"He has tested positive unfortunately for coronavirus so is self-isolating, and is awaiting the results of the next test,” Hodgson said prior to kick-off per club website.
“He is not feeling particularly ill, but unfortunately the test proved [positive], and he is following the procedures.
"We've known about it for a few days. We didn't want to broadcast it to the world because we were rather hoping that the second test might free him to play.”
In his absence, Michy Batshuayi was handed a starter’s role, albeit, they ended up on the losing side following Chris Wood’s eighth minute strike.
Senegal’s Cheikhou Kouyate failed to deal with a high ball from Johann Gudmundsson with Jay Rodriguez latching onto the centre-back’s misdirected headed clearance, neatly placing the ball first-time into the path of Wood who coolly slotted past Vicente Guaita.
Despite waking up from their slumber, Palace returned home with heads bowed low as the hosts put up a strong display defensively to frustrate their attacking forays.
With 30 minutes left to play, a chaotic Dwight McNeil back-pass gifted Batshuayi a golden chance, but Pope was quick to the danger, spreading his body to foil the Belgian’s first-time strike with an outstretched leg.
Followingthis result, Hodgson’s men have now lost four games in the 2020-21 Premier League campaign to sit in the 11th position on the log having accrued 13 points from nine games.
Zaha, who featured for Cardiff City on loan in 2014 and has found the net five times in eight Premier League games so far is also expected to miss Friday's tie with 15th-placed Newcastle United.
